Avoiding the Chainsaw Massacre
author: Fredric L. Rice
 e-mail: frice@skeptictank.org
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The U. S. Forest Service provides chainsaw safety training.
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Avoiding the Chainsaw Massacre
On the week end of April 1st and 2nd, a number of volunteer trail builders and maintainers were offered the opportunity to learn how to use and maintain chainsaws safely and efficiently with a day of classroom instruction and a second day of hands-on one-on-one training. The U. S. Forest Service offered the instruction through the Arroyo Seco Hotshot fire crew stationed at the Angeles Crest station in the Angeles National Forest.
 http://www.arroyoseco.org/
Volunteer trail crews work on maintaining existing hiking trails in an effort to limit the human impact of hikers, concentrating foot traffic along known routes to eliminate widespread erosion and pollution which can stem from numerous people making their own foot paths through the forest and wetlands. Trail crews also work to make packing garbage out of camping and picnic areas easier, both by making trails safer to walk while carrying loads, and by making trails wider enough to use pack horses and mules to cart out garbage.
Extremely Valuable Instruction
The instruction was offered for free but the safety and know-how imparted on the class was extremely valuable, both in terms of learning the safe operation of chainsaws but also in learning how to utilize the tool with the least amount of physical effort.
We had three hotshot crew during the two days, all of whom had years of experience being transported or air dropped into the nation's forests to combat fires. Such crews are expected to be dropped on a line with all their equipment and operate without re-supply of water, food, equipment, chainsaw parts, or replacement crew. Because of this, the trail builder class got a solid education in field maintenance and repair of chainsaws.
The class was geared toward fire fighting students rather than for trail workers who would never need to bring down burning trees or clear burning brush. Also trail builders aren't expected to cook, get "sunburned" through their clothes by intense heat, work 16 hours chopping, cutting, scraping, and clearing a fire line for 16 hours - or longer if needed and it's safe to do so.
Though the course was geared toward fire fighters, all of it was informative and useful for the mundane maintenance and development efforts that volunteer trailers perform in non-burning forests. In fact in some of the nation's unhealthy forests (either due to beetle infestation, pollution, or disease) trail building holds a few of the same hazards and dangers encountered while fighting fires so all the instruction was good to take with us.
Safety Hazards
We only got to quickly glimpse a few classroom slides (offered in a PowerPoint presentation) of some of the fairly gruesome effects of what chainsaws are capable of doing against human skin. I understand that a lot of people might not want to look at such stuff - more so a bunch of volunteers - but the point of the slides graphically underscored the reasons behind the need to be aware of what you're doing and what's around you at all times when the chainsaw is running. Despite that, the slides flipped across the video monitor quickly without being discussed, though I suspect that when fire crew are being instructed, the slides are covered in gory detail.
Greg, the hotshot crew who gave us most of our instruction, covered some of his history of fighting fires across the United States. He'd nearly been killed twice, not by unsafe chainsaw operation but by trees falling on him. The first time it sounded like it was only the fact that his head and helmet were crushed by a tree into mud that allowed him to live. The second time a tree fell on him, he didn't want to talk about.
Diseased or burned tree limbs falling on trail workers is a serious hazard, just as potentially deadly as whole trees falling on hotshot crew. The lesson was summed up in the name of what they call hanging trees and tree limbs "Widow Makers." Even when clearing a seemingly unconnected hazard on the trail, trail builders were taught to look up, look around, be aware of the situation around them, and while working, re-check the canopy and surroundings to mitigate against injuring yourself or others working in the area.
The classroom training wasn't boring and we all stayed awake. The course was kept lively and informative with occasional humor thrown in which helped carve important safety issues into our brains. Part of the classroom work was one-on-one starting, engaging the chain, and stopping of the chainsaw. The instructors made sure that all of us weren't too timid to hold the saw or were dangerous while holding it. That took place before the actual field work.
Field Work
I spent the night camped along the hiking trail just above the fire station. We had been invited to stay the night if we wanted to however I believe I was the only one who came prepared to do that.
In the morning we broke into three teams with a hotshot crew heading each. We assembled at a work area along a hiking trail further up the Angeles Crest Highway about four or five miles. All three participants with the San Gabriel Mountains Trail Builders stuck with Greg along with about 10 other students, and we were all allowed to take turns using the chainsaw to clear brush from a hillside near a tank (315,000 gallon capacity.)
Normally trail builders wouldn't be utilizing chainsaws for this type of work. We use edge tools to remove brush, hand saws to remove tree limbs, hoes with rakes on the other end to clear and level trails with the occasional pick axe and metal bar to remove rocks. In a fire fighting arena, using the chainsaw to clear bush with a swamper hauling the remains away works good for stopping a fire's progress, but we usually clear the brush all the way to the dirt and don't have a fire to worry about.
The second half of the day's field work consisted of limbing fallen trees and bucking them - sectioning them up to be hauled away. As part of that training, the Forest Service had identified three trees in the area which needed to be removed to increase sunlight on the forest floor, and to generally improve the health of the stand.
Greg brought down the first two trees which were growing from a single stump, carefully and safely dropping the trunks exactly where he'd wanted them to maximize the later training we'd be given. Normally when doing environmental work like this, volunteers would remove trees that are already down across streams or trails, either from fire or disease, but we got good instruction on how professionals take trees down when their canopy is on fire, or when a gap is needed in the canopy to halt the progress of a line of fire.
After the trees were down, all the students got time on chainsaws removing limbs and sectioning up the tree into movable pieces. While not working with the saw, the others "swamped" by removing the tree limbs, brush, and log segments, making piles which the Service will eventually compact and later burn.
Hector, the other hotshot who merged his students with Greg's, took down a third tree that had been identified and tagged by the Service for removal. His tree was a bit more challenging since it was growing almost entirely straight whereas the two previous, growing out of a single trunk, was leaning.
The third tree required the use of wedges pounded into the back cut to tip the center of balance over, whereafter the students fairly quickly sectioned and hauled that tree up as well.
Felling Trees is a Shame
I'd never seen or been near a mostly healthy tree being removed, and there's something sad about it. Even when dead or diseased trees are brought down, something about it is a shame. To be sure none of these were old growth, but even bringing down fairly young pines is a bit of a shame. The neighboring trees left standing, however, will get to enjoy the increased sunlight.
The U. S. Forest Service
Everybody seems to love to hate the Forest Service, with maybe Oregon environmentalists having some pretty good reasons. But despite all the problems, difficulties and (often enough) injustice and corruption, the fire fighters and other Service personnel are out in our nation's parks doing a great deal of good. The Service learns - if at times slowly - and they're not the inhuman, faceless monster that gets depicted some times among environmental groups.
As a nation we've learned that some times one should allow fires to burn their course, a healthy forest needing the occasional burn to clear the forest floor and remove trees, making room for young trees. At the same time, the Forest Service maintains groups of tireless macho men and women to attack and limit wildfires when there's need to do so. It's a serious good that the Forest Service does.
These chainsaw courses are a part of the good stuff, and the trail maintainers and builders who attended the class now have an increased safety awareness, and have a good, solid understanding of how to maintain our equipment (or the borrowed Forest Service equipment) and we walk away with a better ability to utilize the tool with less effort, something which also increases our overall safety.
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fire suppresion breaks the natural elemental chain of cleansing for the forest. if forest fires burn regularly they really dont damage the trees, they just clear out the windfall and provide good nutirents for the rest of the forest from the ash and char.
fire suppresion has caused the build up of windfall so that when a fire does get into a stand it burns higher and hotter than normal, gets into the canopy, and burns thru the bark of the trees thereby killing the forest.
if the natural cycle of fire is allowed to turn then the forest stays healthy and the extreme killer fires we see today will stop. 100 years of fire suppresion by the forest service has made a damn big mess. too much windfall laying around means forest bonfires.
if people would stop building their wooden houses next to forests then we would not have to worry about the natural cycle of fire, and we would have more preserved forested areas instead of little splotches of trees amongst housing developments.
recently the forest misservice has used the big fires as an excuse to clear out the timber from a burn and then plant tree farm monocrops. bad bad bad for the forest. if they would just let a burn lie and not salvage it and not plant it with monocrop then we would see more healthy forests return from a burn.
The paranoid side of me even speculates that the freddies or timber companies might even put the torch to controversial logging sales so that they can then salvage and plant. of course as i said that is the paranoid side of me, but i know that the FS doesnt really give a rip about human safety as in example of towns that have been destroyed and people killed by land slides that were the result of clear cuts.
dont tell me the forest service has any good things about it. whenever man tries to manage nature nature loses.
F.U.F.S.
fire is a natrual cycle of nature.