Oregon Initial Attack Pinned Firefighter 2024

Initial Attack, Willamette National Forest - August 24th 2024

The sawyer voiced his plan to buck the tree and instructed everyone to clear the area in case the tree rolled.
To get this tree on the ground before bucking it into movable sizes, the sawyer began his cut about 20 feet down the tree’s bole from the root wad. When he made the cut, the trunk of the tree and the root wad rolled down slope approximately a quarter turn. Unknown to the sawyer, the swamper was below the root wad portion. When the tree rolled, the root wad folded the swamper awkwardly in half—pinning him to the ground under the root wad with his head against his left boot. The sawyer and the IC and IC(t) heard yelling and quickly realized that an Incident Within an Incident (IWI) had occurred.

[This data was initially provided by the USFS Weekly Summary Report.]

Hit by Log, Initial Attack, Chainsaws, RLS