Peers as Teachers: Rope Safety
Our crew gathers every morning before dawn or just as the sun is rising to prepare for the work day ahead. We work long hours to insure we have enough time to get the job done right, with safety and accuracy. This sometimes means we push 12 hour days including preparing our fleet and taking care of our tools and gear. The silver lining? That beautiful morning light and our crew getting to take most Fridays off!Once a week we make time to meet as a group and share. We call these semi-regular check-ins our "Safety Meetings." Sometimes this is where we can talk about the work we have finished and what we learned during. Other times we do actual training. Just like in other vocations where the professional must keep learning in order to do their best work, we too are always improving our techniques and striving to be ever more safe in the way we work.
Over the last several weeks we have had the uniquely wonderful experience of learning from several our very own crew members, each of who brings their own expertise to our field. Pictured below is Ryan Prentiss, an avid outdoorsman, cyclist, and rock climber, who is sharing with his co-workers the importance of knowing the "Working Load Limits" for our rigging ropes. These are not the ropes we climb on, but the ones used to lower and haul branches and trunk wood. Here he is demonstrating what a safe "Bend Radius" is for a rigging rope, where the pulley needs to be 4 time the diameter of the rope in order to not stress the line's structure.
While looking over our gear before every job, as well as during, we consider when and where damage may have happened in the rigging lines. Damage may occur in a number of ways beyond the obvious cuts or frays. These include but are not limited to: overloading the integrity by rigging too heavy a load, over using one end of a rope instead of alternating ends, putting too much tension on one place in the rope like in a small pulley or in the sharp bend of a knot, or allowing the rope to get too dirty or even to be over exposed to sun light. It is very important to follow the specifications for each individual rope and to size up whenever possible. Beyond this there are more techniques to care for the ropes such as setting up rigging with more rope in the system which improves both strength and elasticity of the rope. Managing and maintaining our gear is a constant!Below Trevor and Ryan are assessing and organizing some of the team's key rigging gear.
EAB In Asheville
Unfortunately no, the EAB is not a new epic local brew but a parasitic beetle sweeping the nation. EAB, short for the Emerald Ash Borer beetle, Agrilus planipennis, infests Ash trees only. We are sorry to say that we have just recently had to remove our first Ash tree due to an infestation. EAB first came to the area from the north in late 2016.Removing an infested tree is a delicate process, as the beetle has compromised the strength of the tree by eating into the sapwood. Extra caution should be taken, and a crane makes it all the safer for the climber.
It is the larvae of the beetle who is causing the lethal damage to the Ash trees. Adult beetles lay their eggs on the tree's inner bark, and when the eggs hatch the larvae tunnel into the trunk. This effectively girdles the tree, disrupting the tree from feeding itself. D-shaped exit wounds are visible on the bark from where the mature beetle finally emerges. Another sign that your Ash tree may be infested is if you seem to be hosting a happy population of beetle-eating birds including woodpeckers and Nuthatches. If an Ash tree has visible tip die-back then it would be a good idea to have the tree inspected for EAB. Treatment is a possibility if caught early enough.For more information take a look at this website http://www.emeraldashborer.info/
