Ha! Let me keep this nice run of gnarsty, embararrasing damage stories going: Cake job this winter of taking down a 70'h x 4' diameter multi leader silver maple with the bucket truck, landscaper to clean up the mess, very easy tree, not a single roped cut in it, all just go up and make sizable cuts high enough so they are short enough to fall within the very large drop zone surrounding the tree. I note there are many cables in the tree as I start this simple job, say to myself at least 5x's during the work to double and triple check for cables before making cuts cuz that would be awful to cut something still cabled. Hehehe. Job was going great, saw razor sharp and screaming. Saying to myself geez a helmet cam would be cool here to film this tree getting blasted apart. Got all the brush down, now working on nuking large chunks of leaders. Dropping pretty much everything to its lay cuz of all the room available. I'm on a roll making the logs land flat. Being diligent about checking for cables and removing them as they are encountered. Up about 30'-35' now, cut a 16" x 12' long piece, probably 600 lbs. As I watch it tip over to the lay, I see, a cable still attached. Ho-ly fock. As the piece comes off its stump the cable takes over and pulls it pendulum-style sideways toward the house which is 45' away. At the precise moment the piece has swung to and has the house in it's sights, the cable breaks and the log flies like a spear. As it hurtles I'm watching it all in slow motion saying its gonna fall short, its gonna fall short. Alas, no. It hits the house just like a battering ram, going partially through the wall and smashing a window of the McMansion, glass all over the living room floor. The homeowners thought I was a dope. I was rather crest fallen to have caused major damage on such a simple job. $12k in repairs and a major scar on my safety record.
As an old timer once said to me, "it's the easy ones that will get ya."
