Circle of death. Advisory

[Dak]

worth a look folks.

 

'Circle of death' Advisory Notice from NZ Arbor

 

climb safe!

[Taupotreeman]

Beat me to it Dak. Got the same email came through this morning and made me think. I have to change the way I have done things for years.

[Paul Jenks]

Generally this type of incident only occurs on certain trees and in certain situations. I.e. leaning trees of a species with a tendancy to propogate a split rapidly. Inexperienced climbers should never be asked to carry out this type of operation without very close supervision.

If there is the potential for this to happen other systems for work should be employed to mitigate the stresses on the felling cut, (to make it behave properly), and/or mewp access.

I have come close to this in the past felling out over-large willow stems on pollard heads and whilst I like to expose my guys to some hazards in the work place, this is not one of them.

One of the 'safety' systems taught is to connect to the central ring, therefore negating the risk of getteing squished. This is fine up to a point. If a tree has the potential to split during felling, I want to be able to get away as quickly as possible. Rope into the main stem but not the sub-stem. When you're on the final section take it out in little bits.

Regardless of WAH and their evangelising about the climber making fewer cuts in the tree to minimize cut injuries, larger pieces means significantly larger forces.

[Paul Smith]

When doing big willows like that I learnt very quickly to have a central TIP whilst doing the gob cut, I then undo my strop. One slam dunk from a 30 foot top is a quick learning curve! Even though the cuts were good and the middle was bored and with a set of ears it still split out!

[Grandad]

A well known danger, and the familiar names crop up time and again, Willows, Pops, leaning trees... I heard a story from a guy I hired in to do some stump grinding for me: he had a friend killed while taking the top out of an Ailanthus altissima, it "barber-chaired" on him and killed him outright. I once took down a very tall woodland Fraxinus on a steep bank, all the weight right at the top, it had a lean, not too bad but it did lean slightly. I got less than halfway with the felling cut when it barber-chaired on me, boy did I move fast, not easy with a 45 degree muddy bank to climb with an 038 in my hand! Maybe I should have left the saw behind, do you think?

Deer man has it right: severing the sap wood on either side of the mouth reduces the chance of a split and boring the centre can't hurt either.

[Le Sanglier]

I have done a number of Alianthus since being here and they always snap out unexpectedly, branches trunks the lot, a very dangerous tree.

[SJH]

Scary stuff, interesting to connect to the central ring though, I've had a Beech limb split downwards past my wirecore which tried to crush me to the stem, luckily it fell out of the strop releasing me.

[Lancstree]

When I worked in the states I remember having a safety briefing because a chap from our company in a different state was killed in this way. Not certain but I think it was a dead leaning elm. I've had it happen to me on smallish stuff and it frightened me so now if I take myself out of the loop.

[Tom D]

I have had it happen to me before, not a big bit though and I don't have my strop on my side d's anyway, its on one of my vids but I can't remember which.

 

One thing that you can do is choose where to fell your top... A splits most likely to occur on a clean grained piece of timber (think how easy logs like that are to split with an axe) if you fell your top just above a stub or branch the "cone" of branch wood that extends into the main stem helps to hold it together. Obviously you can't always find a suitable stub but often there will be something.

 

On conifers like spruce I will often remove one whorl of branches, and then fell just above the whorl.

[Grandad]

Scary stuff, interesting to connect to the central ring though, I've had a Beech limb split downwards past my wirecore which tried to crush me to the stem, luckily it fell out of the strop releasing me.

 

I suppose it can happen on a beech but usually they snap off short, not a tree I would expect to split like that... It just goes to show that you can never be complacent, it's the unexpected that will kill you.