Workplace Safety North / Ontario Mine Rescue

New Logging Safety Information Package

Includes infographic, list of recent fatalities, hazard alert, and safety discussion points

Dec 16, 2015

The Ontario logging sector – both conventional and mechanical – has one of the highest fatality rates in the province. In the past five years, there have been 13 traumatic fatal injuries in the Ontario forestry industry. That’s almost three per year.

Most experienced forestry workers don’t think it will happen to them, but regular – and potentially lethal – hazards like driving, cold weather, working alone, fog, visibility, chicots (dead, rotted trees), and dangerous machinery require the utmost vigilance. 

The following list shows all forestry-related fatalities over the past five years in Ontario.

  1. Worker struck and killed by a chicot that had been dislodged by a skidder. 
  2. Millwright fatally injured when he was struck by a loader in a mill yard.
  3. Worker died after getting lodged in the auger of a sanding truck. 
  4. Cutter-skidder operator was felling a large tree and as the tree began to fall, the top broke off a nearby chicot and fatally struck the cutter. 
  5. Double fatality occurred when an excavator attempted to pull a logging truck out of a ditch; it slid sideways on an incline and fatally pinned two workers standing nearby.
  6. Worker fatally struck by a falling tree while clearing a path for a skidder.
  7. Worker driving a tractor-trailer in dense fog collided with tanker truck and was fatally injured.
  8. Skidder operator pulling logs from the bush was struck by a falling tree and fatally injured. 
  9. Tractor-trailer collided with a pickup truck turning left off a highway, fatally injuring a young worker.
  10. Worker dismounting skidder was struck by falling branch and killed.
  11. Worker fatally struck by a falling tree that a skidder had been attempting to push down. 
  12. Two half-ton vehicles hit head-on while travelling on a logging road, fatally injuring one worker.

Source: https://www.workplacesafetynorth.ca/news/news-post/new-logging-safety-information-package