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Saturday, July 2, 2016

Safety First

I normally don't wear my hard hat when cutting trees because they are mostly small enough to push over or I have a steel cable and come-along on them.  Thursday a little voice told me to wear my hard hat while cutting trees with the folks from the local charity that was getting firewood on our property.

We had been avoiding a particular tree that had broken off in a windstorm about 8' up from the base with the top of the tree hung up in some other trees but clearly broken off from itself. We finally decided to get it down to keep it from falling on an animal or us so we put a strap on the top broken part and I cut the base off. We figured the guys pulling on the strap could pull it away from where I was cutting. As I cut the base off it tilted and the top half came loose and swung down and then separated from the other trees and fell back right at myself. I jumped out of the way but a large limb on the tree hit me on the hard hat. I only got a cut on my ear because of having the hard hat on.

I don't know if the straps tied together separated or if the guys couldn't hold the weight of the 15-16" in diameter tree but it ended up swinging down and then falling right at me. But for that hard hat I would have received a substantial injury I'm sure. I think I'll wear that hard hat more often when working with trees. Lesson learned....trees are unpredictable and hard hats save serious injuries.

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