sudden/summer limb drop

[peatff]

Youtube here from 2012 of a chap on a motorbike who got hit by a falling branch, the odds are high but it must happen occasionally. Mute it cos he is a bit verbal.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgqChIRJsX8[/ame]

[Acer ventura]

fair cop :-)

That's put that one to bed. no excuses not to do the job. have to get those hot sweaty climbing trousers on and do some work.

 

Hi Haljam

 

It's your risk so it's your choice. Do bear in mind though that the risk of harm from putting those trousers on is around 1/15 000, but this figure does not account for the sweaty state of them. Perhaps the thing to be more concerned about are the socks with a risk at around 1/5 000. Mind you, the data set for socks also includes tights. So it might, or might not, be a lower risk than that for you.

 

Cheers

 

Acer ventura

[benedmonds]

Overall the chances of being in a tree when it suffers sbd are tiny, let alone being tied in to the branch which fails. Really we are all around trees all the time, and even witnessing an sbd event is rare. The concern has crossed my mind in the past, but I never let it worry me...

 

My guys were hedge trimming last year and a beech dropped a pretty big limb, apparently he had been under it moments before...

[daltontrees]

Hi Haljam

 

In the interests of balance, and to get a handle on some proportionality and perspective on what is demonstrably an incredibly low risk (it would appear to be less than 1/600 000 000 to the public in the UK based on what statistics are available), you might want to consider the contents of this thread on the UKTC.

 

What's Barrell On? - Jeremy Barrell & Summer Branch Drop

 

I rather suspect that no matter how hot, dry, calm, post rainfall, horizontal the branch is extending beyond the canopy, or any other causes that are claimed for a failure that is not yet well understood or clearly defined, your risk of death or injury driving to the site in the first place would be many leaps in scale of risk magnitude greater than from Summer Branch Drop whilst there.

 

Is anyone on here aware of any climbers, or more likely groundsmen, who have been injured or killed by what appears to Summer Branch Drop.

 

Cheers

 

Acer ventura

 

All that stuff about risk from SBD (whatever that is) isn't much use in asssessing the risk to a climber. Putting full body weight far out on an already overextended limb of a susceptible species during the conditions known to co-incide with SBD cases is something that personally I would avoid.

 

Although 'SBD' mechanisms are not known, it empirically is a loss of strength relative to dead load. Drying might be the cause of loss of strength, but in that simple equation adding a load amounts to the same thing - failure. It's never happened to me, but when I have to go literally out on a limb I spend a minute extra just making sure I get my redirects right and that I am triangulated so that when in work position I can tighten everything up and reduce my load on the branch to the very minimum.

[haljam]

Thanks Acer for putting this into perspective. I had never really been aware of it until last year when I had two cases. Then once you do a small amount of reading via google it is easy to pickup on (miss)information. a little bit of knowledge ......

 

Is there any national log kept of suspected SBD? Obviously HSE get interested if someone is injured, but I wondered about just getting a database (albeit a very small one) of possible suspect cases? might get interesting in a few years to correlate with weather patterns etc.

Thanks all for your comments.