A Brief History of Logging on the Tongass NF

 

While working for the Forest Service as a timber sale contract administrator for 20 years, I saw a few injuries to loggers and almost had a couple myself.   Logging is considered one of the most hazardous jobs there is, involving the falling of trees, yarding or skidding of logs to a landing, loading logs onto trucks and driving those log trucks to the mills.   For myself, working alone most the time there was always the daily challenge of being safe.   Driving forest roads with logging traffic was always a hazard.  Knowing the location of turnouts was critical to avoid a collision while driving to a logging operation. Listening to the CB radio was important to know where the next loaded truck was or it was best to follow an empty truck to the job.   There were always the usual hazards, running into a hornets nests while walking in the woods or falling and breaking a leg or arm.   I had my fair share of stings from hornets and had one bad fall down over a rocky ledge while posting a cutting boundary on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest.  Took me a while to walk back up hill to the truck with an injured knee as it was starting to snow.

  When walking downhill in a unit being cut from the bottom up it was vital to yell out to let the timber fallers know my position.  Once on the Gold Beach District of the Siskiyou National Forest in 1985 the logging manager for the Champion plywood mill in Gold Beach and I walked into a unit where the fallers were jacking trees away from a protected stream.   We did not hear saws running and thought the two fallers were taking a break.   As we got closer we noticed a tree top moving in our direction and realized they had been jacking the tree to fall alongside the tree we were walking on.   We both turned and ran, but I knew I would never out run it, so jumped off the down tree and took cover under it as the big old growth fir fell along side of it shaking the ground.  Something I will never forget.   The logging managers came running back yelling my name thinking I had been hit and was glad to see me crawl back up from under the tree.   Afterward the four of us discussed our mistakes, especially not yelling out to let the fallers know we were coming and the fallers for not yelling out “Down she comes or timber!”   On another job where log cutters were bucking blow down trees into logs a log above rolled over a cutter breaking both his legs in a couple of places.   His cutting partner walked to their truck to call for help on the two-way radio.   An ambulance arrived from Gold Beach when I got there and I assisted with five other people transporting the injured cutter on a litter over down trees to the road below where the ambulance was waiting.   He would yell out in pain as we made our way over the logs.

My first encounter with an injured logger was on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest in 1975.   While driving past a unit being cut a timber faller had walked up out of the unit to his truck, so I stopped to talk to him.   He was bleeding from the mouth and was missing some teeth.   He told me he had looked up while falling a tree and a small branch came down hitting him in the face.   He was headed home to Happy Camp, about 80 miles away and said he could make it.   The next day he was back on the job.   One of the most tragic incidents, that I did not see was a cat operator clearing logs from a road right-of-way job and setting his own chokers in order to skid the logs to a deck.   While taking chokers off the winch behind the cat it began to roll backwards, pinning him to a tree.  He was found dead at the end of the day by his foreman.   The cat engine was still idling. 

It was important to know where cables were located when inspecting a unit during the yarding operation, usually to check if required fire tools and clearings around cable blocks were being complied with.   All movements of cables is under the direction of the rigging slinger, supervising the choker setters or the hook tender doing layout of a new cable road.   One whistle means stop, two means go back on it, three means go forward, usually with a load of logs.  There was a small quarter inch diameter cable called the ‘hay wire’ used to pull the bigger cables during a road change.   Sometimes it was hard to detect where this cable was as it was usually laid out over down logs or in the brush.    Once on the Orleans District I walked over this cable as I heard a series of whistles and shortly after crossing it the cable jumped up in the air six feet and was moving faster than I care to remember.

During my career from 1988 to 95 on the Cottage Grove District of the Umpqua National Forest there were two accidents.    One involved a small logging contractor, who was branding logs while they were being loaded onto the truck.  A small log rolled off the truck killing the man instantly.   The other was on a thinning operation when a guy line on a small swing boom yarder broke and the yarder fell on its side pinning the operator’s foot under it.   An ambulance was called for from Cottage Grove and I had to guide it up a maze of logging roads to where the accidents happened.   They had to dig the man’s foot free to get him out of the machine.

There were other accidents and fatalities that happened on other jobs I was not associated with.   Usually two or three times a year the state OSHA inspector would make a visit to our office and wanted to know where any logging operations were happening and get a map of their locations.    When the word got out some small loggers would just shut down for a day or two to avoid getting any citations for safety violations, usually for using frayed or worn out cables, faulty safety equipment or personnel not wearing proper safety gear.   

One of the most memorable accidents was when a Forest Service employee in the silviculture department at Gold Beach was assigned a new Ford pickup and drove it onto a landing to inspect a plantation.  He looked back at his truck to see it roll over the landing and tumble down to the bottom of the unit.   He had left it in neutral and forgot to apply the brake.   He was walking back toward Gold Beach when my supervisor picked him up and asked what happened to his truck.   Even   my boss had a hard time digesting what had happened.  The cost of that new truck was deducted from the employees pay for many years. 

At least in all my years I never wrecked a Forest Service truck, but had my fair share of close calls.   I do recall the gear shift stick coming out of transmission on a return trip to Cottage Grove and had to leave it in 3^rd gear all the way back to the station.   Looking back I feel lucky to have made it this far. 

Don't remember many dry days, usually some form of rain most the time.  At the end of my tour toward the end of September it started snowing.  Most logging prior to WW2 (1920's-30's) was done by permit with the FS.  A good book about this is called, 'Handloggers.'  It is a story about a married couple who lived on a boat and during the day the man would take his hand saw and axe and search the steep slopes along the ocean channels for a large spruce that would fall into the waters below.  They would use the boat to gather up the logs he would buck up, usually in the water and make a raft that they pulled to the mill at the end of the season.   Some trees would hangup and not make it to the water, so he would use jacks to free up the tree.   Sometimes the tree would let loose like a freight train just a few feet from him--talk about dangerous work... 

On one of my 4 day off periods in Petersburg, a friend of mine, who had been the recreational staff person there got me a tour guide job for a day on a small tour boat.   Lunch was provided and there was no cost to me for doing it, so I agreed not really knowing much about the ecosystem.   She said, "just wing it" and I did.  Told the people about the trees, animals (mostly eagles, ravens and bears) and the glaciers.   People were happy about what I told them.   Thank God nobody asked what my real job was.