Wood chipper fatalities are not common, but when they happen, they create huge local news. Everyone has certainly heard a wood chipper going in their neighborhood; they’re used by tree care workers; cut-tree limbs are fed into the chipper to be ground into mulch. Several times a year in America, the entire body of a tree care worker gets pulled through a chipper. Usually, nobody witnesses this. The wood chipper fatality is discovered when it’s noticed that the tree care worker is suddenly missing.
After the tree limbs are ground up, the wood chips get “sprayed” into a truck through a chute. If a person is pulled through a chipper…his mulched remains get sprayed into the truck along with the wood chips. When this happened a few years ago in Colorado, the coroner referred to the remains as morselization. Being pulled into a chipper is a near-instantaneous death.
Wood chipper fatalities like this can be prevented. It is not an accident, any more than running a stop sign and getting creamed by a truck is an accident. You ran the stop sign. You didn’t adhere to the rules. Nobody just gets pulled into a chipper.
At least one of several mistakes has to be in place.
1) The tree care worker (which isn’t necessarily someone who climbs a tree and uses a chainsaw; some tree care workers stay on the ground the entire time and are not certified tree care specialists) stands smack in front of the chipper feed tray as they toss in tree brush. The minute you stand in front of the intake, the wood chipper has a chance of snarling you in.
2) The worker (called a groundsman or “groundie” in the tree care industry) is wearing gloves. Gloves can become snagged on tree brush. As the brush is being pulled in by the chipper blades (which can pull brush in at two feet per second), the worker is unable to readily let go his snagged glove/hand after he tosses the brush in. The brush gets quickly sucked in by the blades…and the worker, being still attached to the brush via his glove, gets yanked in as well.
You’d think he’d just shake his hand free of the glove that’s snagged within the tangly brush, but when tree limbs are being pulled in at two feet per second, that’s easier said than done. Also, if the feed tray is low to the ground, a 180-pound man can easily be toppled onto the tray if his glove sticks to the tree brush as the brush is being pulled in.
3) The worker is wearing loose clothing that gets snagged in the brush. The end of a loose sleeve can get trapped within the entanglement of tree brush, and before the worker knows it, he is toppling over onto the intake tray and moving inward, towards the chipper blades. He literally has one or two seconds to react to save himself. This is nearly impossible, but it has been done, when the worker hits the emergency stop bar of the chipper. The worker saves himself, but usually ends up losing a foot.
There have been cases where another worker witnessing the event has hit the bar, but the bar failed to work. I heard of one case in which the co-worker hit the bar and it stopped the blades…but by then, the victim was already halfway through the machine…feet having gone in first, dead within seconds, his co-worker lying on top of him and crying.
4) The worker uses a foot to kick in a stubborn tree branch, or, he uses a foot to detangle a brush jam. This is if the intake is low to the ground, of course. Some chippers have a high feed tray. So they kick their feet in there, and next thing, they’re being pulled in towards the chipper blades, not even enough time to scream for help. Or maybe they do scream, but their screams are drowned out by the chipper engine, and the climbers up in a tree with chainsaws going can’t hear anything. Workers use their feet or hands quite frequently, but only a very, very tiny percentage of these workers end up getting mulched or “morselized.” It’s Russian Roulette.
Why this carelessness?
Many tree care experts will tell you that it comes down to lack of instruction, lack of training, lack of common sense, and even a language barrier, as some groundies may speak only Spanish. Or, the worker has been in the industry for so long, that he becomes over-confident and lets his guard down. Some tree care companies mandate that all grounds people be certified arborists. I heard of one tree service owner who had a policy of firing anyone on the spot caught using a hand or foot to untangle brush. Other companies are less strict and will hire the cheapest labor possible, with minimal safety instruction.
Certified tree care experts will tell you that it takes only a little common sense to prevent these gruesome deaths. For example, instead of using a hand or foot to untangle a jam while the wood chipper is running, use what’s called a push stick, which may be simply a long wooden staff, or a sturdy tree limb; use that to shove in stubborn brush or detangle it. Better yet, turn OFF the chipper, wait for the blades to stop, and THEN untangle the jam.
Don’t use gloves, and feed brush while standing to the SIDE of the machine! I myself have personally witnessed men standing smack in front of the intake while feeding it…and not only that, but one man was actually bending towards the intake and reaching his arms in to shove in the brush; half his arms were in the feed. This was a relatively small chipper, however, and about chest high from the ground, but it still had the potential to chew up his arms.
