Jed
TreeHouser
Ohhh... Thanks Sean, yeah, it was. (This co. that had the 100% avoidable death.) Sooo... but... dude... like, pretty much every death in tree service is 100% preventable. But, yeah, we do have our families to go home to, and I appreciate your advice. We will watch each other's backs. I guess I was just trying to fly my flag about the fact that you're not exactly talking to the safest show in town. Only two weeks ago I was stupid enough to have almost fallen a tree on myself... and here's the thing... I actually KNEW that it would probably happen, said something before doing it to my buddy, and then went ahead and did it anyway, just because the homeowners were watching and were expecting it to come down. You can't get much stupider than that. But that isn't even what I was talking about with the basal-tie thing. At Eastisde we do a lot of what we call, "pigsty" removals. This means that a climber will go up a connifer while the ground guys are otherwise occupied and just "pigsty" it down (both hands on the topping saw, just blasting limbs off as fast as he can untill he is high enough to fit the top. But let's imagine he didn't do this. Let's imagine that the ground guys had cleaned up under him until he said, "Hey guys, could you anchor me into the butt of this pig, I wanna swing over single line and get this other double top out of the next tree." So the boys anchor him at the base, and the climber then proceeds to pigsty THAT one out. At this point the boys from the other crew who have finished up their job early, come over to "help" us out. "AHHhhh... what's this stinkin pigsty!?" they exclaim, and then proceed to warm up a saw and cut into the pigsty in order make the mess more extractable. Next thing you know the climber is seeing how his pigsty is working to arrest his fall from 94 feet. You get it? I probably wouldn't have thought about this HAD I NOT DONE IT MYSELF about nine years ago, albeit not with a human but with a GRCS. My buddy (and foreman) put a GRCS on the bottom of the Cottonwood he was going to remove, but then changed his mind, and decided to have me go deadwood the Fir across the yard, since he figured he could just pigsty it. Well he pigsties nine thenths of it, I get down from my deadwood, and so then he decides to just have me lower a mondo top out of the cottonwood for him. "Ahhh, but look at this stinkin pigsty! I can't even get to the butt of the tree!" So I start up a hopped up 440 with a shorty bar and start blazing through the pigsty... next thing ya know my tip kicks back off a branch or somethin, and runs up the trunk of the tree. You know how highly-tensioned a GRCS strap is right?...... Dude. Like one tiny little chisel just BARELY kissed the bottom of that yellow strap, and the GRCS hits the dirt. "Hey, uhh... Boss?!"..... "WHAT?!!" "Well, uh... ya mind if I just take wraps around the trunk to get that top?"
