[TheForge] Frosty- tree cutting

[Andy Gladish]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:14:34 -0800, Mark A. Pesetsky  
<pesetsky at princeton.edu> wrote:

> I have done a bit of tree work and all I can say is that you MAY think  
> you know where the branch is going, but that is NEVER 100%. That is why  
> it cost an arm and a leg to have an experienced team of guys to come in  
> and take trees out.

I spent more years than I care to admit doctoring trees and doing disease  
prevention and maintenance on urban and suburban shade trees and  
ornamental shrubs- but the bread and butter seems to always be tree  
removal, since people don't want to think about things like maintenance  
until it's too late.
One thing that struck me at the time was that the L&I rates were quite low  
for that trade, lower than for carpenters, vastly lower than for loggers.  
Reason was, we were very deliberate and took our time sizing up the  
situation each and every time because there was always a house underneath,  
or power lines, or swimming pools or a preschool play area...it wasn't  
production work.
The danger comes when you're just crankin' em out, when something  
extremely dangerous becomes routine. We just can't pay that much attention  
for that long at a stretch, thus guards on equipment in shops and so forth.