That totally sucks Stephen, but the important thing is that no one got hurt. At the end of the day that's all that ever matters. Doing this work is literally walking the line of hitting something at about all moments, even worse than construction ime. Make it right with the customer, as I'm certain you will, and then continue like nothing happened.
He's trying to continue a talk about pull lines vs wedges, without talking specifically about this particular incident. I know less about cutting trees than just about anyone here, but i do know about forces. When using a pull line, you are using leverage to overcome lean. All force you exert is more or less perpendicular to the hinge, so no force is exerted on the hinge itself (actually a down force is also present, helping hold the hinge together). When wedging, you have much less leverage, but are using an inclined plane to do the work, so huge loads can be exerted easily. However, the load is vertical, so the hinge has to also withstand the tension created by the lifting of wedges. Now while millions of trees have been dropped successfully with wedges, examining the forces present on the hinge it's easy to see that pulling will exert less on the hinge, and therefore is more predictable. There's a reason why not all trees are attempted by wedging alone. That doesn't mean that wedging isn't useful or improper to use, its just that on iffy trees, maybe pulling is cheap insurance. If I'm doing the tree, i make sure there's enough money involved to allow me to pull it, so i have all the help i can get. It's kinda like tying in twice, yes you can do it without for years, until that one time. I also work in spreading hardwoods here, and rarely get straight up trees like forest conifers that are more conductive to wedging. My .02, which is really like .02 of dog shit lol.
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