Hello all,
I wanted to pass along what happened to me recently to hopefully prevent others from making the same mistake. Sunday morning after our annual picnic the wife and I decided to work in the yard. Mostly getting the vegetable garden ready as I was already late getting our tomatoes in the ground. My neighbor has a row of trees on our property line that have been slowly growing larger and beginning to shade our garden beds. He gave me permission to cut any limbs that I wanted. That morning I got out my chainsaw, tools, and my ladder. The limb was about 12 foot or so off the ground. I positioned the ladder and made my way up to cut. After I cut most of the way through, the outer part of the branches on this 8" round limb landed on the ground. I thought the safe thing do would be to go down to the ground and remove all the small branches from the limb. This left only the main part that was now dangling from the uncut portion of the cut. I went back up the ladder with my chainsaw and made the cut releasing the large limb and it fell to the ground then swung my way hitting the ladder knocking it over and me on top of the ladder. My wife was watching so she called 911. I ended up at Duke trauma with 5 broken ribs and 2 fractures on two of my vertabrae. I guess I am lucky I'm not paralyzed but I will be sidelined from most activities for the next couple of months as I heal. I'm hoping to be well enough soon to work on some laser or 3d printing projects.
So, please, if you need to cut trees or limbs be very careful. Have an experienced person there or hire someone to do the work for you. Yes a tree trimmer is expensive ($700-800 last time I inquired about removal of one large pine tree), but I'm sure that is much cheaper than my hospital and doctor bills will be. In retrospect, I wish I'd have went out and purchased a pole saw and stayed off the ladder. I lived, so I will learn from my mistake and I hope you all will learn from this as well.
Take care everyone,
Sam Knight
I wanted to pass along what happened to me recently to hopefully prevent others from making the same mistake. Sunday morning after our annual picnic the wife and I decided to work in the yard. Mostly getting the vegetable garden ready as I was already late getting our tomatoes in the ground. My neighbor has a row of trees on our property line that have been slowly growing larger and beginning to shade our garden beds. He gave me permission to cut any limbs that I wanted. That morning I got out my chainsaw, tools, and my ladder. The limb was about 12 foot or so off the ground. I positioned the ladder and made my way up to cut. After I cut most of the way through, the outer part of the branches on this 8" round limb landed on the ground. I thought the safe thing do would be to go down to the ground and remove all the small branches from the limb. This left only the main part that was now dangling from the uncut portion of the cut. I went back up the ladder with my chainsaw and made the cut releasing the large limb and it fell to the ground then swung my way hitting the ladder knocking it over and me on top of the ladder. My wife was watching so she called 911. I ended up at Duke trauma with 5 broken ribs and 2 fractures on two of my vertabrae. I guess I am lucky I'm not paralyzed but I will be sidelined from most activities for the next couple of months as I heal. I'm hoping to be well enough soon to work on some laser or 3d printing projects.
So, please, if you need to cut trees or limbs be very careful. Have an experienced person there or hire someone to do the work for you. Yes a tree trimmer is expensive ($700-800 last time I inquired about removal of one large pine tree), but I'm sure that is much cheaper than my hospital and doctor bills will be. In retrospect, I wish I'd have went out and purchased a pole saw and stayed off the ladder. I lived, so I will learn from my mistake and I hope you all will learn from this as well.
Take care everyone,
Sam Knight
