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ABSTRACT
A random sample of injuries to employees of feller-buncher/grapple skidder operations in the piedmont and coastal plain regions of the South was drawn from the 1997 claims records of three cooperating workers compensation insurance providers. Additional information was also provided on equipment, labor, and operations for each firm reporting an injury. The data were entered into a computer database management program for sorting and analysis. Results indicated that manual chain saw delimbing is the most hazardous job on "partially mechanized" operations, where delimbing is performed manually with chain saws, while equipment maintenance and repair is most hazardous on "fully mechanized" firms that employ mechanical delimbing. Even on fully mechanized operations, however, a substantial number of injuries occur when various employees attempt to manually fell or delimb the occasional oversize or difficult-to-access tree that cannot be processed by a machine. A significant number of equipment operators are injured while simply mounting or dismounting their machine; workers with less than I year of experience are much more likely to incur an injury than more experienced employees.
Logging is a dangerous occupation. Loggers incur 26 percent more accidents and injuries than the average industrial worker, and are 19 times more likely to be killed on the job.1 Of all the tasks on a logging operation, manually felling trees with a chain saw is generally considered the most hazardous.2,3 Justifiably, safety training for loggers in the southeastern United States has often focused on the proper and safe use of chain saws. As logging becomes increasingly mechanized, with feller-bunchers the norm in the piedmont and coastal plain regions, and stroke or pull-through delimbers becoming commonplace, the nature of logging accidents and injuries may be changing. To achieve the greatest return on investment, logging safety training must be targeted to address the most frequent injuries occurring on the typical range of mechanized logging operations. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the accident and injury characteristics for "mechanized" feller-buncher/grapple skidder logging operations, the most common logging system operating in the piedmont and coastal plain region of the South today.4
STUDY METHODS
Three cooperating workers compensation insurance (WCI) providers agreed to share their 1997 logging injury claim records, with the assurance of confidentiality for individual claims and...