When you should really be a spectator

Drouin Tree Service

Gerry B has written books and all the bla bla bla,He doesn't even get the species correct.Ive done more of these cypress than he will ever see,big shock when it all goes wrong.As if you would do that in the first place

YouTube - Cypress Wreck.mpg

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

Drouin Tree Service

Here you go GB no need for me to write a book on this.

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

Garry Brockley

sorry but if those trees had been properly assessed that would have brought up those problems and why was he running away from the trees instead of assessing where they are going and watching thier descent? i suppose we all make cock ups and at least he put his up for public veiwing

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Eric Frei

What do you expect when the single tree didn't have a notch or back cut and the triple leadered tree went premature. There would have been 3 potential scenarios.

1/ The attachment rope snap and the single tree remain.
2/ The rope hold up the failing/falling triple leadered tree
3/ The single tree break or heave over.

Seems to me this guy made a huge stuff up.

I know what he was doing was preparing the triple leadered tree for felling, and then going to the single tree last and felling that one using it as a trigger.

If the triple leadered tree wasn't cut deep enough to go then a potential stall would occur if the single tree were notched and back cut.

The real issue is cutting beneath 3 co-dominant unions like that is always risky, better to try to cut above it and fell the leaders individually if possible. Now Berenek said, "due to massive rot in the unions of the triple it begins coming apart before it can be properly cut up" .... this is not the case. Often regardless of that the unions have included bark .... what holds them to the stump is the wood at the base of each leader which he has now cut off (the wood that's removed doing the back cut is what holds the co-dominant section not the wood that's at it's side).

Often with trees like that I tie the leaders together, cinch it all up to hold the tree together. Had that tree been tied up and cinched it wouldn't have split apart.

Live and learn. Sure you could get an excavator or tower etc, but you have them leaning in the right direction, tied together, seems a no brainer however the triple codominants are serious warning bells.

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Sean Freeman

I am very glad he was okay, I suspect the connection between the triple and the rear tree gave him extra time to escape the danger zone and that in itself was a good outcome.

Seems to me like it would have been a combination of the inclusion and the decay.

Multi stemmed trees that are old stump regrowth can be very dangerous to fell particularly when the diameter or geometry of the lower stem make standard back cutting impractical.

I presume the fact that there was a failure hung up in the canopy prevented him taking the option of felling the stems of the triple one by one.

Good on him for putting the vid up since it is a reminder of the importance of considering the worst case scenario before committing to a fell.

TreeCo

I agree!

It takes guts to post when things go wrong.

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windthrown

Bad face cut, bad use of wedges, bad estimate of potential failure (rot is common in those old monsters, at least in the cypresses that we have here), and cut was way too low. Don't drink beer before faling trees? Seems that he could have cut at least one if not two of the main trunks first, as there looks to be enough room. Seemingly he estimated that the full tree would fall away from the stucture better as a group? Cannot say with just the video footage given though.

I have used bulldozers to fall trees by cutting out the soot ball from one side and putting the bucket on the tree and tipping them over. Even huge Doug firs go over over pretty well that way. Root hinge. Typically if I cut an old oak with huge multi-trunks like that, I move up and cut one main at a time, then cut the stub last. I did one big laurel not too long ago that way, and after cutting one of three main trunks, the tree heaved back and failed from being off center by the other two trunks. But then it was just a matter of cutting the limbs off working in toward the base of the tree, and it ws slice and dice. I did not expect it to fail that way though.

Takes balls to post a failed tree fall, as you say though. Like that one that pitched opver and onto the fence, as the guy was running away. Or the barber chainr... that seems to be a setup for a barber chair, but the guy was takem off guard.

Drouin Tree Service

Multi leadered cypress are very dangerous..

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

newguy18

One,i'm not knocking on Jerry,2 he even said at the end thats the first time a tree has done that to me,shit happens,even to the best of us,i'm sure you all have had shit go wrong,it just means your human,i knock new techniques all the time,i knock ansi,but i don't knock other tree workers for admitting when they made a mistake and have the guts to post it,hoping that someone else might learn from it,my hats off to Jerry.

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old schooler

Eric Frei

Not true.

Around 2006 Beranek shot a helcam video of him cutting down a cypress that also fell apart whilst he was in the back cut, footage showed him running. It was on an old Terhouse thread I started called Gerry B felling a dodgy cypress. But due to MB's gross incompetence of running sites it's now lost in one of the numerous board changes/url changes and losses of attachments.

Cutting beneath large included unions like that is very dangerous, and he has been caught before.

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Drouin Tree Service

Yes i remember that

I suppose it is well regarded at the terdhouse as theres very little knowledge other than basic crane work and chipping!

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

newguy18

We all know,or should know cutting in to a included union is very risky,i've done it with a fair degree of success,but oak is a hell of a lot stronger that cypress,unless it has heart rot which alot of mature trees do,rot+softwood trees+union cutting=a dodgy tree,that is really bad to climb,fell,or even pull or push over with machinery.

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old schooler

NeTree

He recognized his error, and posted it up for others to learn from. Takes humility and nerve to do that. With his otherwise pretty good track record, I can't see any reason for flaming; it's just not constructive.

Jason, note that the video was a re-post of an earlier one; I think you'll find that's the same tree as before, just a better quality video.

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Erik

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rbtree

Bolding mine......Couldn't agree more.

Lotsa loopy stuff in this lame thread.

newguy18

I just think that Jason and Eric kinda have a vendetta against Jerry,but i could be wrong.

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old schooler

Drouin Tree Service

1,He didn't get the tree species correct.

2,He went about in a very unprofessional manner.

3,Yes its educational to the VERY inexperienced.

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rbtree

Speaking of tree names, what the hell is "cypress pine"

Guffaw.....

Eric Frei

You are wrong on that, in fact the opposite is most true where water walking Jerry goes around bad mouthing others.

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Drouin Tree Service

Water walking maybe he could make a canoe outta that one,him and MB could fill it with there own"self praise"in no time!


"due to massive rot in the unions of the triple it begins coming apart before it can be properly cut up"

What load of BS!!!Another "me me me" Im never wrong!!!Just like MB indecently both of them have had major injuries recently(tree work),Its our duty to inform people looking to learn the right ways and to steer well clear.

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

Drouin Tree Service

Not at all newguy

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

NeTree

Odd; I find Gerry to be one of the most humble and helpful fellows I've ever sipped scotch with.

Why the personal flaming? Surely we could have a mature discussion of what went wrong with constructive criticism, instead of a bashing.

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Erik

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TrevMcRev

Good on him for having the guts to post a stuff up.

Lucky to have gotten outta there!

Looks like Cuppressus macrocarpa to me...

Eric Frei

I believe both had bad foot injuries on the job and donations were collected.
What brand chainsaw pants was Gerry wearing?

Here's another angle on the included co-dominant stem, pretty dang obvious.

This was an imminent not an accident.

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Eric Frei

I thought I was.

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NeTree

Cupressus macrocarpa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


...or Monterey Cyprus. I had to look that one up; there's none remotely near me.

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Erik

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Drouin Tree Service

Sure fire away Eric!

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Drouin Tree Services | Excavator Hire - Drouin and SE Gippsland | Landclearing Melbourne

NeTree

The closest thing I can equate those trees to are what we call "Wolf Pines" here; which really isn't a specific species, but rather any multi-stemmed pine.

From the description, a climbing inspection had already been done,and excess limb movement and a broken leader hung up in the codom indicated climbing it out wasn't the safest route.

My next step would have been to fire up the bucket, but then... I have one. (Well, frankly, that probably would have been my first step, since I don't climb my fat arse up a tree any more than I have to anymore.)

I've tripped codoms like that before myself, by tying the stems together, and while they've detonated on impact like in the pic below, they have held long enough to do the job. (I do approach them with the possibility of failure in mind, and Gerry says he is suspecting as much at the beginning of the video.) Lightening-struck trees carry the same risk of failure, when felling from the ground.

Nobody's perfect, for sure. Good on Gerry for being attuned to the situation, and hitting the bricks when it was coming apart.

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Erik

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Eric Frei

Yeah, tie them up but to do that in (I suppose) that tree without climbing would be a time consuming throw bags stuck in the tree exercise.

A bucket truck would be sweet.

Lopa has an excavator, bit of a root rip and shove they'd be gone too.

We weren't there and it's hard to say what the trees were like for climbing that single one first and removing the attachment to the other, then the other could have been felled out in 3 leads.

I usually quote my jobs and get the right gear, don't know if Gerald was out there prior to bid it or just "winged" it. But from a readers point of view they need to know why we do certain things certain ways.

I call it "race to the bottom" where we are competing against the biggest risk taker who often attempts jobs or does them dangerously to save people money (or they're just ignorant). Have you ever had a client say, "do you really need that crane or bucket truck coz this is costing a lot and Joe Mexico over there said he'd just climb it"?

Erik, it's a bugger of a rake up with lawn that long ... I ask people to mow before we arrive.

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NeTree

I understand the "race to the bottom" mentality; I've been doing this for almost thirty years. I doubt that was the case, though.

But I have done trees for friends and family, where I'll just throw some gear in the pickup and see what's what. If I think I can handle it while I'm there, I do it.

Keep in mind I came from a logging background before I got into residential arboriculture; whether I can flop the tree from the ground get git'r'done is my first question, not last. I do that based on experience felling hundreds of trees in a day, not one or two. Much in the same manner climbing is my last resort; therefore, my least practiced skill.

Yeah, the raking suffered severly; the customer told me she thought it would make my job easier. I told her it would... since we're not raking with the lawn that overgrown.

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Erik

www.netree.org

Eric Frei

I wasn't insinuating Gerry did that, just readers think like that.

Felling with space is a luxury, love those block clears. Get machinery in, no humping log etc. Sometimes you ever want to go back to the woods?

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