District 1 - Shout Out to Lake Carlos
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This month Safety Shout Out goes out to park staff that do complicated tasks in remote areas with an experienced eye towards risk reduction.
Safety is complicated. As you read the real situation below, think about the positive risk reductions decisions that were made. Too often when we have an injury or accident, we focus on the one decision that could have been made different and prevented the accident. If safety was that simple, we could avoid every hazard. Having an eye towards risk reduction does not let you predict the future but does help you be prepared and avoid injuries.
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Employee Recounts Incident: I went outside after lunch to work on pruning ski trails ahead of grooming season, pruning low hanging or smaller leaning trees that would or may affect the ski groomer. A combination of a hand pole saw, and an EGO electric pole saw to prune branches was used.
I started working my way on the trails with the toolcat from the lower campground, beach area, Lakeview and Hidden Lake Group Camp on Hidden Lake Trail. I loaded some 3-4' logs into the bucket of the toolcat as these were right on the edge of the trail near the group camp. The logs were easier to load in the bucket due to being lower to the ground. I did not want to lift the log pieces into the back of the toolcat by myself. The bucket was full of logs, so I was putting a little weight on the front tires. With the colder temps, I did not realize that the tires were low as they did not look low prior to leaving the park shop. I did not physically check the tires but did do a walk around to visually check them.
Where the injury occurred, I had stopped and shut off the toolcat since I had several trees to prune. After pruning and putting the pole saws back into the toolcat was completed, I started the toolcat and raised the bucket again to continue further down the trail. I felt the toolcat lean odd when I lifted the bucket. I drove a few feet and felt that something was off. I stopped, unbuckled, put on the parking lever and got out of the toolcat. I noticed the front left tire had broken its seal and was flat. I got back into the toolcat and dumped out the logs in the bucket and then used the bucket to lift the front tires off the ground.
I called on the radio to the park office, and employee #2 answered. Besides him, only our office person was working that day. I asked him to pack up the portable air compressor (filled) and bring the impact wrench just in case. He was able to load everything into an otter sled as the trails were slightly snow covered and pull that out on the trail about 1/2 mile from the parking lot.
Once he got to the toolcat we used the air compressor to add air to the left front tire, since the seal was broken it would not re-seal in the cold. We decided to remove the tire to bring it back to the park shop to warm up and try to add air. Before removing the tire, we decided to block up front of the toolcat. We shut off the toolcat before going back to the shop and knew the hydraulics would let out and lower the front. Since we did not have any jacks on site, we cut one of the larger tree logs (about 12" diameter) and placed it under the toolcat. We had a chainsaw with all proper PPE. I used the impact wrench to loosen all the lug nuts and had both hands braced on the impact wrench. Once all the lug nuts were off, there was also a plastic hub cap that needed to just be hand unscrewed. With all that off and ready to remove the tire, I placed all tools and lug nuts on the seat of the toolcat to get everything out of the way. The 2nd employee also was busy on the other side of the toolcat using his portable air pump on the rear right tire. When we raised the front end, that put more weight on the rear tires, remember that rear right tire appeared low in the cold weather. I did not ask for his help to remove the tire as he had a cast on his right wrist.
The tools and equipment were out of my way, so I knelt back down on both knees and prepared to remove the tire. The tire was about 4-5 inches off the ground. I had on thinner weight winter gloves at the time and placed my hands at 9 and 3 on the tire and pulled. The tire partly came off but caught on the threaded lug bolts. To prevent damage to the threading of the lug bolts, I moved my hands to 8 and 4 to lightly lift the tire off the threaded lug bolts. I moved my body to better position a lift before attempting. As I slightly lifted the tire and pulled the tire off, it was heavier than I anticipated, and it dropped to the ground. I had planned it to let it drop and did not try to catch it knowing it would be too heavy to catch. I didn't feel anything in my wrist after it dropped. It wasn't until I started to roll it out of the way and loaded the tire into the sled that I noticed pain in my left wrist. We loaded up the air compressor and other tools back into the sled and then locked up the toolcat. Then we together pulled the sled back out to his vehicle which was back in the parking lot (about 1/2 mile away).
Hundreds of decisions had to be made. Available resources were taken advantage of. Having an eye towards risk reduction using available resources such as equipment (toolcat, chainsaw power pole saw), tools (air compressor, impact wrench, sled) all went into reducing the risk. Several factors and events could have contributed to the mild wrist sprain but plenty of good decisions went into reducing the risk while doing the task.
Lake Carlos has a great staff and what impresses me the most is the teamwork and communications that they have with each other. They really talk and communicate well especially around safety. They use their collective abilities and knowledge to support good risk reducing decisions.
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