Posted on 01/30/2014 2:01:02 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Longview, Wash. (CBS SEATTLE) – A Longview man is recovering from serious injuries after he was trapped and sent through a shredding wood chipper machine at work.
Much of Frank Arce’s body has been shredded and crushed after he climbed into a turned-off wood chipper machine to retrieve an object stuck in the bark-shredding device – something practiced by him and his co-workers at the Swanson Bark and Wood Products Company, KATU reports. However, someone was not aware that Arce was inside the barrel-sized machine, and the spikes and claws inside the device were turned back on with him inside.
Arce heard the machine click back on, but he knew it was too late for him to escape.
“Actually going through the machine itself wasn’t the worst part about it,” he told KATU on Wednesday from his hospital bed at PeaceHealth SW Washington Medical Center. “What was the worst part (was) the not knowing what was going to happen.”
Arce’s injuries are severe, and he is expected to remain in the hospital for at least the next few weeks. Arce sustained a broken pelvis, seven broken ribs, a shattered ankle, bruised liver, broken leg, a collapsed lung and a deep cut that runs the entire length of the back of his body. The cut was so deep it crushed his knee, and he remains on a heavy dose of pain medication at the hospital.
He remained conscious throughout the ten-second shredding.
Arce has remained very positive about the incident, saying his co-workers’ training allowed him to receive care quickly, and he was even sharing jokes and smiling with friends and family at the hospital.
“There was a thought (that I was going to die) but it was more like something was telling me I wasn’t going to die that day,” he told KATU. “I felt I had a lot of angels out there with me that day – a lot of people looking out for me.”
The human resources representative for the Swanson Bark and Wood Products company said that the company will be paying 100 percent of his medical bills. And although the Washington State Bureau of Labor and Industries is investigating the incident, KATU found that both state and federal regulatory agencies have found no workplace problems with the company in the past.
Beat me to it... ARF!
What an amazingly resilient man! I complain when I have to go to the dentist.
It can be difficult to ever-vigenlent sometimes. I've caught myself doing some really stupid things around high pressure / high voltage. When you are around it a lot, it can just seem normal and not viewed as dangerous. Stupid, I know, but tends to be true too often.
measure twice, cut once or something like that.
Sawmills are dangerous places. I was in a safe spot in the chip room and still got wiped of my feet and got a couple of fractured ribs.
The chipper grabbed a long piece of scrap and slapped it against the shroud. A piece the size of a baseball bat flew across the room and hit me flat across the chest. I’m just glad I caught the flat side rather than the pointy end. The boss went out and bought some type of flak jackets after that.
Good one.
I wish the victim the very best of luck for a full recovery but it’s hard to believe he won’t have some lasting and severe problems from such grievous injuries.
One of my favorites:
“You should see the other guy”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNcjvlKufHg
“However, someone was not aware that Arce was inside...”
Or were they?
Q. Why did the Washington man go through a wood shredder?
A. He wanted to feel chipper!
Lock Out/Tagout is over-enforced by management so people ignore it, eventually when they shouldn’t.
Hmm...ex-wife's fingerprints on the Start button...could be a coincidence...
My first question was, did they fire the dip stick who turned it back on without checking it first? Do they know for sure that the chump didn't turn it on intentionally?
Ummmm.... hold on a second. Has this been approved by the Ezekiels of TyrannyCare? How old is the guy? How many more productive years might he have?
As a firearms instructor, my first rule is: 1) Always treat every gun as if it’s loaded, even if you know for a fact it’s unloaded.
I say that probably 20 times during each class. Kinda to drive the point home.
It sounds like he went through a mechanical debarker. These have knives which are set to skim off the outer layer of a log while leaving the core untouched. This is like a sphincter which expands in and out to accommodate the diameter of the log which is to have its bark removed. He was fortunate that the debarker wasn't set for a smaller-diameter log.
Some worker went into a low-oxygen environment for regular maintenance without proper equipment and he passed out. A coworker went in to rescue him with predictable results, then another went in. All three died. A friend of mine got their job since there were three openings. After the government investigations, he was required to telephone the president of the company back east to tell him he was going in the tank, day or night, and couldn’t go in until the prez knew. He normally worked night shift and woke the grumpy guy up several times a week.
I was thinking the same thing. A wood chipper that keeps an entire 6 foot piece basically intact is NOT doing its job!
Thank you for offering the only fit description of how I felt watching the State of the Union address.
Unbelievable story.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.