Dateline: Wichita, Kansas
A man in his 40's is dead after falling 40 to 50 feet while trimming a tree this past Friday. He secured himself with a rope around the waist and then tied the rope to a very large branch. The man began sawing on a limb and didn't realize it was the one to which he was attached. When the limb fell, the weight of it pulled him down. The man was helping a friend and didn't work for a tree-trimming company.
We had a fella up here that went up on the roof to shovel snow off. Tied himself to his truck, with the rope over the roof. Mamasan came out, her car wouldn't start, so ........she took his truck! oops!
-JD-
Reminds me of the tree-trimming company I hired to cut down a couple of large maples in my backyard and driveway around 2004. The tree topper did his chainsaw work while secured to the tree with a 1/2" nylon cord tied to his belt; the belt that held up his pants. Then they needed to move my overhead power service line to drop the top off of the tree in the driveway, so they threw a similar nylon cord around the powerline and pulled it to the side while standing in my neighbor's yard. I came home at lunch to check on their progress, then promptly did a u-turn and went back to the office. Two words: plausible deniability. Fortunately in this case, the laws of natural selection did not kick in, and they made it safely off of my property with my trees, never to return (even at half the rate of other tree services).
Another Darwin Award Candidate my father in law
I really had to laugh at this one. My father-in-law actually did this very thing. Luckily he only got a broken hip. I asked him what in the world he thought he was doing? He replied that there weren't any branches closer and he figured he would untie himself before the final cut. Needless to say, the final cut came before he was ready!
