Lombardy Fell Incident

[scotspine1]

Not sure if this had been posted before but worth a look from a felling point of view.

 

Lombardy is a brittle species when it comes to the hinge, it's known to snap quick as soon as the tree starts to go over towards the felling direction - meaning you can lose directional control especially if it's windy or has a heavy side lean.

 

Not 100% sure of what went wrong with the felling cuts in this case but it looks like the hinge snapped early then the wind took over sending the tree over the street onto parked cars, thankfully no one hurt. There was a pull line attached to the truck but from what it seems it was just too windy to fell the tree at that moment.

 

Any other suggestions?

 

[ame=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edjc2Vcf_5Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edjc2Vcf_5Y[/ame]

[Mull]

I'm no tree feller but the truck was only ever going to pull towards the road it was on and how was it going to direct a tree falling towards it without going flat out? Surely the pull should have been from the right hand side of vid.

Lucky nobody was hurtz

[flatyre]

at least it missed the merc!

[treequip]

Not sure if this had been posted before

 

It has but the thread was deleted in a flash

[csservices]

Would always be a dodgy fell with that much cross wind regardless of species, fell it with the wind or into the wind with a pull but that close to a road should have been stripped to a pole first, unless it had a good natural lean and a still day to fell it parallel to the road but even then I would still sway towards stripping it first due to its proximity to the road.

[treequip]

Well the best we can say us that something went wrong but its hard to say exactly what

[18 stoner]

Going on what could be seen here, I'd say a couple of factors were overlooked. The main one being the prevailing wind and also the angle of pull line without anchor line especially given the highway targets.

 

If there was a particular reason (whatever that may of been) not to dismantle this tree, I feel some safeguards could of been used. The main one without doubt would of been an anchor line to act as a pendulum.

 

I guess this is just my opinion and things may of seemed very different on site, but I hope this event can be used in a positive way to show how things can go wrong in the flash of an eye. Very good no one was hurt.

[bob]

Wonder if they had coms as didn't see how driver knew when to pull

Brave fell in that wind though

Having said that I was not there

[GeordieBore]

For me pulling like that is insane against an unfavourable lean on a tree that size. Tree at kerf level only has to open a few mill due to lean or winds leading to a shift at tip height multiplied massively shifting centre of gravity, added to a pull line that high for me means a slackening of pull-line. Slack pull line means no pull whatsoever. The rest is just plain old gravity. That truck would of had to be going a hell of a lot faster to keep tension if even possible.

[oldwoodcutter]

I think I can hear wedges being knocked in right at the start, but of course pops in particular can turn on the hinge, specially with that strong crosswind. We can see in hindsight the banks man giving some signal but it's plain the driver should have got a move on. Well they're not the first to have it happen, and won't be the last, but any work beside a public road has to be beyond reproach.