Chain Saw Injury

Here in ontario we have had laws with chainsaws since 1995 where a licence is mandatory and protective equiptment including leg protection.

I dont have a licence or PPE because I grew up in the bush as my dad was a timber man and I stay far away from them now.

They are dangerous. I have a cousin who was cut by his father when he walked up being his dad and his dad turned with the saw and caught him in the thigh. 80 stitches later and 2 pints of blood he was fixed up.

I would say legs are a common place as well as the face.

I always were a hardhat and ear protection. I'm never too worried about cutting myself when sawing wood, but I always worry about things falling on me, "loaded" branches that swing like basball bats when you cut them, and I already have bad tinitus (ringing) in my ears and I don't want it to get any worse.

A much worse accident happened to the (first) husband of my wife's best childhood friend. He was out clearing land and getting firewood on the back of their acreage with the neighbor from the adjoining property. They were cutting trees on an embankment below a service road, pulling them with a tractor to try to make them fall uphill onto the road. Neither one was an experienced woodsman. The neighbor cut a good sized cedar and yelled that it was starting to go. But the friend's husband didn't hear him over the noise of the tractor through the hearing protection he was wearing. The cedar fell on him and killed him on the spot. The neighbor didn't know exactly where he lived, so the way my wife's friend found out that her husband had been killed was that a deputy sheriff making the rounds finally came to her door to ask her if she recognized the bloody clothes he was carrying. No good parts to that story. There were so many things wrong with what they were doing that I can't even begin to narrow down what the lesson there is. Don't be stupid, I guess, which is advice that presents a tremendous problem for me.

All the best, Stan

chaps!!!

• Hobby farm