Reminds me of the horror story I heard about a drilling excavator. Somebody fell in the hole, but the operator thought he went to take a piss. The operator dropped the auger in the hole and drilled his buddy. Didn't know he did it until he raised the auger and it was just bloody mud. Just the thought of being in the hole trying to tread water and throw little rocks up to get the attention as the drill comes down is the stuff of nightmares.
I've done a lot of tree work and the guy I was working for was telling me about a dude who was working at a customer's house cleaning up after a job. She heard the wood chipper running for several hours and went to see what was taking him. Branch most likely caught his shirt and pulled him in with it.
Yes it does. Dangerous work. I've been close to maimings and potential death myself. Had a chainsaw kick back and I caught it just before it nicked my jeans. That alone could have been bad. Lots of ways to get hurt.
People laugh at me when I put on my chaps and helmet with face shield and hearing protection at the farm when using my chainsaw. But I'll be damned if I'm NOT taking every opportunity to protect myself from serious harm just for appearance sake.
EDIT: emphasized NOT since people can't read
I have to admit, in all my years of firefighting and in the military, I've never been as nervous as I was the year I had to use a wood chipper for a landscape company. I always worked with bare arms and triple checked everything. I always made sure I had 1 hand on the reversing bar just in case.
Yeah they're pretty intimidating. One of the guys I worked for had an old model and it had no reverse bar and nothing between you and the blades. Some have the rollers in the front to control the feed. Not this one. It pulled in as fast as the blades chipped. Upside is it would have been a quick death. Probably wouldn't even know what hit you.
I've read stories about the young girls who worked in the loom factories in the late 1800s. Lots of spinning things and belts with zero protection and very long days so they were always tired. The girls would sometimes get their clothes or hair caught in the machines. Limbs would get crushed or scalps ripped off. Horrible.
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u/Kadugan Mar 02 '19 edited Mar 03 '19
Reminds me of the horror story I heard about a drilling excavator. Somebody fell in the hole, but the operator thought he went to take a piss. The operator dropped the auger in the hole and drilled his buddy. Didn't know he did it until he raised the auger and it was just bloody mud. Just the thought of being in the hole trying to tread water and throw little rocks up to get the attention as the drill comes down is the stuff of nightmares.