| Admin - Razor sharp and independent 2 X Diploma Level 5 qualified arborist
Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane
Posts: 12,820
|  Re: Preventing tree death & injury summary
Excellent paper!
This $300K award was appealed and overturned. Quote:
A Victorian
case put more onus on the visitor to assess any risk
themselves (and by implication on any person who
took it upon themselves to guide other visitors). A
woman injured at Toorongo Falls in 1993 (Table 3) was
awarded over $300 000 damages from the (Victorian)
Department of Natural Resources and Environment in
1998. The claim was not that the hazard should have
been removed, but that there should have been warning
signs. The injured woman (and her companion, who
was killed) was exploring a riverbank, in forecast gale
force winds, when the tree came down. She was not,
in other words at a designated campsite or other more
closely managed sited, but was in a forested reserve.
The Victorian Court of Appeal overturned the award
of damages:
Justice Clive Tadgell said in the appeal
court judgment that the area was not a
cleared camping area and could not be
compared with a metropolitan park or
municipal playground. He said it was
hardly reasonable to expect a warning
covering the whole forested area of
the reserve. Justice John Batt said the
department was entitled to expect adults
to know that trees fell randomly in
windy conditions. “To enter a forest or its
immediate surrounds, like entering the
surf, is to take a risk of injury, albeit a remote
risk,” he said. Justice Frank Callaway also
upheld the appeal, but said forests were
more dangerous than an increasingly
urban population appreciated. (Gregory,
2000, p. 8)
| In Canada sadly a child was killed in the botanical gardens whilst on a school visit. Coroner makes some recommendations. Quote:
Following the death of a ten year old boy on
November 5 2004, on a school excursion in the botanic
gardens in Hamilton, Ontario, a Coroner’s jury made
eighteen recommendations, including inspection of
trails every morning, every trip to proceed only after
properly trained individuals determined whether
weather conditions were suitable, and assessments
annually or twice a year (depending on the use of a
trail) by qualified tree risk assessors (Wolksi, 2005).
| Local knowledge, weather events, typical failures. I've personally spoken about ironbarks with included forks, scribblygum limb drop and grey gum failures. Quote:
For outdoor educators
the aim should be to identify camp sites and resting
places as free from doubt as possible; in other words,
their aim is more to recognise and then avoid trees
which might be particularly hazardous than it is to
develop an elaborate understanding of tree defects,
bearing in mind that:
No tree is entirely safe, given the
possibility that an exceptionally strong
wind could damage or uproot even a
mechanically ‘perfect’ specimen. It is
therefore usually accepted that hazards
are only recognisable from distinct defects
or from other failure-prone characteristics
of the tree or of the site. (Lonsdale, 2000,
p. 3)
The importance of understanding local
weather, the particular site, alternative sites if a
hazard is detected, and the characteristics of local
trees emphasises, yet again, the contribution of
environmental knowledge, and in particular local
experiential knowledge, to outdoor education safety.
It might be helpful to obtain expert advice on how to
assess trees in a particular location, although I doubt
that would be practical in most cases.
How then should outdoor educators acquire
knowledge of tree failures in the area in which they
will be guiding students? In my experience evidence of
past tree failures is all around in forests and woodlands
that have not been extensively scavenged for firewood.
Simple observation of these past failures can reveal a
great deal about a particular location. For example, in
my own experience, the kinds of failures observed in
alpine ash forest, box ironbark forest and woodland,
and snowgum forest and woodlands respectively
are quite different. To understand the reason why a
particular failure occurred, the protocol used to assess
standing trees can be used to provide some guidance.
| But toward the end it is summed up well. Quote:
Although incidents involving
trees are likely to be regarded as ‘freak’ accidents, the
possibility of such incidents is certainly foreseeable,
and most are preventible in the sense that they are
associated with specific, recognisable hazards. (Having
said that, the risk from falling trees and branches could
only be eliminated entirely by avoiding all trees; there
is some inherent risk around trees.)
| |
10th November 2009, 08:04 AM
So often you link to something then it's gone. 
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