Tree work incident report 16CA007: compressed by palm fronds, California
What California's FACE report 16CA007 says about a landscaper compressed by a skirt of dead palm fronds on December 4, 2016, and the 61 minute rescue.
Checked against the sources at the bottom of this page on October 8, 2026. Rules, fees and pay change: the source has the last word.
This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. This page restates one official fatality report in our own words: case 16CA007 from the California Department of Public Health's Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation program, dated October 12, 2017. It covers a landscaper who died while trimming a palm on December 4, 2016. No one is named here or in the report. OSHA's tree care page lists a later California report with the same event type, 23CA001, for February 13, 2023. The table of every report we read is in the official case library for tree work incidents.
What happened
A homeowner hired a landscaper who had been working for a neighbor. The landscaper was not running a licensed business and had 25 years of landscape work but no training on trimming palms. He brought two other landscapers, neither certified. The report says no written injury and illness prevention program existed.
The palm was 60 feet high with many years of dead fronds hanging as a skirt. At 8:30 a.m. one landscaper went up a straight ladder, secured himself to the trunk with a strap, wore spikes, a harness, hard hat, glasses and gloves and carried a chain saw. He climbed under the dead fronds and cut and pulled them off while the other two cleared what fell. At 9:30 a.m. he came down to the ladder to have the saw refueled by rope, then climbed back up. Just below the fronds, the skirt of cut fronds shifted and collapsed onto him, pressing him against the trunk. The people below could not reach him.
The rescue
A call to 911 was logged at 9:56 a.m. The local fire department arrived within six minutes and tried extension ladders. A neighboring city sent a 75 foot ladder truck, which had to be placed in a neighbor's driveway because the tree stood far from the street in a fenced backyard. Firefighters cut away the fronds and brought him down unresponsive with no pulse. He was pronounced dead at the hospital after another 20 minutes of treatment. The report puts the rescue time at 61 minutes and the cause of death as restrictive asphyxia.
What the report recommends
The report recommends that palm work be done or supervised by workers certified by organizations such as the Tree Care Industry Association or the International Society of Arboriculture, and that crews use an aerial lift and cut fronds from above. It describes a suspended climbing method developed by arborists in San Diego and Los Angeles that keeps the climber above the skirt, and says it should be used only by a trained, experienced worker. It also recommends that property owners hire certified and, where required, licensed trimmers, and that fire departments in palm areas write rescue protocols, including at least two ladder trucks and pumpers on standby to wet the tree. The climbing side of this is in the guide to aerial rescue.
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