Fair warning

Faller Bill Boardman (kneeling)
leads a new faller training session
with, from left: Shandy Campos,
Evan Schwartz, Dale Orchard,
Trevor Munn, and Jesurun Marks
in June of last year, southwest of
Campbell River, B.C.
In 2005, the BC Coroners Service reported 45 forestry-related
fatalities, seven of them fallers. WorkSafeBC and the council have
since worked together to create a culture of safety in the forests. One
means of embarking on that safety mission has been through the
certification of fallers under the new BC Faller Training Standard.
From Boardman’s perspective, once the standard was brought in,
“everyone had to step up to the plate.” Initially, he saw resistance,
but since then, he says, acceptance has grown. “Now, the reality is
chain brakes are like seatbelts.”
Veteran faller insists on planning and
preparation
Former faller Dave Gaskill knows firsthand what it’s like to benefit
from working with Boardman, a bull bucker (faller and bucker
supervisor) with “an unprecedented focus on safety” years before the
introduction of training and certification standards for fallers.
“When Bill came to see you, he’d look at the quality of your stumps,”
says Gaskill, now an occupational safety officer for WorkSafeBC. “He
would comment if he saw sloppy work. He wouldn’t tolerate it. I’ve
seen him let guys go for bad work.”
Boardman would walk the quarter, inspecting the falling face and
looking for hazards, document them, and then formulate a plan.
“Nobody did that back then,” Gaskill says. “He’d inspect your
equipment. And he’d make sure you maintained two tree lengths
from your partner.”
During helicopter tree removals, Gaskill recalls Boardman being
particularly diligent. “On steeper ground, a tree can slide for a
kilometre and cause fatalities,” he explains. “The tree can come
down the mountain like a freight train.” Boardman would walk the
ground until he was 100 percent sure that a tree wasn’t going to
come down from above on a faller. “I learned from watching him.”
Trainees benefit from a voice of
experience
Dave Gaskill’s wife, Wendy, a former certification coordinator for the
Council, was the one who nominated Boardman for the award. She
calls him the “faller whisperer,” because of his knack for getting
fallers to listen to him — no easy task, she says. “Fallers are a tough
“ In this business, you don’t make
mistakes. There’s no margin for error.”
—veteran B.C. faller and forestry safety
award-winner Bill Boardman
breed. They’re independent-minded, and can be reactionary at
times.”
She often sent Boardman out to work with fallers on additional
training after they were certified. “I would unleash Boardman on
anyone — usually someone stuck on the ‘way-back-when days’ — who
scored low on their evaluation due to inability or unwillingness to
meet the standard. His goal was to work with the men to raise their
mark high enough, so my ‘evil eye’ would look elsewhere.”
She feels personally grateful for his uncompromising stance. “He
was one of the fallers who broke in my husband back in the day. I
thank him for providing the tools that kept Dave safe throughout his
career.”
An affinity for safety spans four decades
Boardman had no such safety mentor when he began falling trees in
1976. “I’ve seen the full spectrum from: ‘Here’s a chainsaw. Good
luck. We hope to see you tonight’ to big companies willing to do
in-house training.” In addition, he’s witnessed a lot of changes in the
industry itself. “My granddad logged the valley floors. My dad logged
the side hills. I’ve been put in a helicopter to the top to where my
granddad said, ‘They’ll never log that wood up there.’” And now that
they do, fallers face a new set of risks. “On steeper, tougher,
inhospitable ground, the danger goes up.”
Since 2009, Boardman has been providing faller safety training for
the council. These days, he leaves nothing to chance when he’s
working in the woods. “Maybe I’m a glass-half-empty kind of guy, but
in every single situation, I ask, ‘What can go wrong here?’
“In this business, you don’t make mistakes. You don’t get second
chances. You get crushed, maimed, or killed. There’s no margin for
error.” He cautions fallers to “leave their problems in the truck” and
maintain a constant focus on the job. “It’s like playing chess: always
stay five moves ahead so you can adjust the plan.”
The faller whisperer turns 62 in May and is still falling and training
others, still trying to make changes, one careful cut at a time. “I like
taking these new guys and trying to implant in them safe work
practices that will stay with them all their lives.”
For information on B.C. faller training and certification, visit
www.bcforestsafe.org/training/faller_certification.html.
WorkSafe Magazine March / April 2013 21