| [College of ACES] | [University of Illinois] | [Illinois CES] |
Many years ago when I was taking rock and ice climbing lessons I got to know the instructor quite well. He and i were part of a gang that would get together every Thursday to Telemark ski. Larry and I spent some lift rides together talking about teaching and learning. Larry taught art classes in college so he had an education in teaching that made him an excellent climbing instructor. If the teacher knows 100% of what is needed to be learned, the students can only absorb and retain about 10% of that knowledge withoutfurther intesive study. Most students don't make the effort to do that. So, if the student then becomes the teacher, the second generation student only gets 10% of 10%, or 1% of what the instructor knows. Pretty thin soup! And potentially very dangerous. Maybe that is why we have such stingent guidelines. So that , in the field, the 1% of the knowledge is enough to get by.
There have been some references to "Common Sense" in the safety threads. What do you mean by common sense. For you it means one thing, for me another. When we were ten years old common sense was different thatn when we are twenty. In one of the First Aid classe I took, the instructor defined common sense as "The practical applicaation of everything that we know." See how this allows everyone to have a different common sense. We can't say "Use common sense" because everyone has learned different things. Don't use common sense as a measure of intelligence or safety.
I would like to know what you folks think about this scenario:
Whenever a treeworker uses a ladder to enter a tree, they MUST be tied into a rope climbing system. This may be the same double rope system that we work in or maybe a single rope with an ascender.
This is a scenario that is being considered by some of the movers and shakers in our trade. People who are not technocrats, but are working in the arboriculutre filed as educators and production climbers. These people are already on the ANSI committee.
Are treeworkers falling off ladders? Or is this, to quote Don Blair, "A solution to a problem that doesn't exist." Yesterday, I used a ladder all day to get into several trees that were on hills with lumpy gound. I did not feel 100% secure in the ladder placement so I set a single line to ascend into some of the trees. When I was on the level, I didn't use the rope. It would be really redundant to have to rope in every time.
There are less dangerous (note: Idid not say SAFE) ways of using a small saw one-handed, and lots of wood is cut that way. But, to start advocating the one handed cut without teaching how to cut safely with two hands is not the best advice. How do we teach safe one-handed use? Lots of good suggestions have been shared here. Knut Foppe, from Belgium, shared a good tip that I am working on incorporating into my technique. Whenever cutting with a chainsaw always be tied in with two ropes. This is going to be hard to do because I have spent 25 years not doing that. This is especially important when cutting near our rope or flipline or when cuttng one handed.
Tom