We recieved a callout from Energy Australia to remove a fallen tree suspended on their wires. The wires were covered Aerial Bundle Cable (ABC).
I went down to check it out and was a little taken back.
The tree had snapped at the base and was still attached to the stump, it was on an embankment above a walkway with two major weight bearing points, the ABC and a weak looking branch that had a partial fracture.
There was no access for a crane due to the masses of overhead infrastructure and the only tower that could gain access was a 50ft, again due to OH wires.
The 50 could only reach the last third but this was enough to clear the ABC and other services.
I decided to set up a large rig off two trees that were just close enough. The plan was to use one tree ( a large Euc punctata, with bracket funghis and a suspect top fork) as the main hang point, but to take the stress off the weak fork I put two pulleys at equal height and set the rope so that the branches pulled inwards and not away from the fork. The other tree was a cinnamomum camphora that was set in a similar two pulley systen to be used as a brake on the slew. As a saftey stop i put a butt rope on the bottom of the snapped tree with a porta wrap and locked this off and also butt tied the trunk to the stump. Troy dean a contract climber friend got out on the suspended tree from the next closest tree
and put in two slings, a 2mtr and a 3mtr, because the fallen tree had two major weight bearing points that were not of equal height I wanted to lift the lower section up a little faster with the shorter sling. The ends of the slings were shackled together and attached to the major rigging tree.
Both of the rigging lines were being controled with a friction drum lowering device.
Tension was applied and then I started takingfoilage off and the tree branch that had the weight started to peel away. Again Troy D to the rescue with a 4:1 mechanical crank up thingy, the offending branch was strung back to another solid trunk and the cutting continued.
The end result was as I wanted with the fallen tree floating off the suspennion and lowered down to the deck. All wires remained up and the two garages and the fence that it was over did not get scratched.
During the whole process there was a constant trickle of residents coming through as the pathway was the only access and egress for the residents along the riverside.
Many thanks go out to Josh Barker of The Joshua Tree and Troy Dean of Troys Trees, without who's help and ideas and b!%ls this job would have done my head in.
The pics are a bit hard to see but on some I've tried to hilight the fallen bits. Any queries just post and I'll try to explain
Cheers Brad