Ice Shards and Chain Saws

Chain sawing ice-glazed trees means large and small pieces of sharp ice may fly around your work area. Unprotected eyes can easily be injured in these conditions. The key safety practice is to wear a hardhat and face guard. Be sure that the screen is down on the face guard and the screen is attached to the safety helmet.

The Ice Ricochet Factor

Ice-coated limbs, branches and trunks that are glazed and frozen hard, especially in sub-zero conditions, are frictionless surfaces and a potential tree cutter’s nightmare. Cutting bent and broken tree parts in these conditions means cut parts may ricochet off adjacent ice-coated surfaces. Careful hazard assessment, a cautious attitude, and wearing a hard hat, face screen, and steel-toed boots can help prevent a disabling injury.

Tangled up in Glaze

Each iced tree situation needs careful assessment before you do anything. Sometimes, it’s better to do nothing, even if it’s a mess, and especially if the situation is beyond your skills. Obviously, making contact with a power line is always unsafe. Be cautious, and let the power line pros deal with tree and powerline problems. When in doubt about a tangled or bent iced tree, get some help. Call an experienced arborist.

Each iced tree situation needs careful assessment before you do anything. Sometimes, it’s better to do nothing, even if it’s a mess, and especially if the situation is beyond your skills.

Where trees and branches are bent or tangled up in other trees or tree parts, and the whole mess is still glazed, it is very difficult to see all the hazards. If part of a tree has fallen into another, and all of it is ice-coated and ready to fall, be especially cautious.

Springpoles: The Stairway to Heaven

Under normal conditions, a springpole, bent over but not snapped or broken, is tricky enough for the most experienced woodsman or woodswoman. Even unfrozen, a springpole has enough stored tension in the tree trunk to drive the best of us right into the ground. Ice loading introduces more unpredictability into a bent tree situation. Is it simply bent over from the ice, or, is it bent over from something else? How are other trees holding the springpole in place? Is the wood in the tree frozen or unfrozen? Is there any tension in the trunk that could take my head off if I cut it right now? There is no safe way to cut a springpole. Never cut bent-over trees. Get some help from an experienced arborist or woods worker.

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Prepared and reviewed by: Roger Merchant, Extension educator. Reviewed by Jim Philp, Extension forestry specialist.

For more information on emergency preparedness, contact your county UMaine Extension office.

© 1998
Published and distributed in furtherance of Acts of Congress of May 8 and June 30, 1914, by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the Land Grant University of the state of Maine and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cooperating. Cooperative Extension and other agencies of the U.S.D.A. provide equal opportunities in programs and employment.