Tree work incident report 18CA002: pulled into a stump grinder, California
What California's FACE report 18CA002 says about a laborer pulled into a stump grinder on April 9, 2018: the rope, the machine, the missing training and the recommendations.
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 18CA002 from the California Department of Public Health's Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation program, dated March 25, 2019. It covers a laborer pulled into a stump grinder at a home on April 9, 2018. No one is named here or in the report. The table of every report we read is in the official case library for tree work incidents.
What happened
A landscaping company owner, who was the only employee of his business, was hired to remove a sycamore, its stump and its roots in a front yard. He hired a laborer to help and rented a large stump grinder. The large machine removed the main stump but could not reach the remaining roots below ground, so the owner returned it and rented a smaller grinder that could be lowered into the hole.
On the day of the event, at 11:30 a.m., the two attached a rope to an eye hook on the disc guard to help lower the machine below ground level. The rope stayed on the machine while it ran. The laborer tied the other end around his waist and leaned back to help steer the cutting wheel while the owner operated it. A neighbor across the street saw him near the edge of the cavity. The report concludes that the rope probably went slack and caught around the grinding wheel, which pulled the laborer headfirst into the rotating disc. He died the next day, and the death certificate gives blunt force head injury as the cause.
Training, instructions and the rental
The report says the business had no written injury and illness prevention program. Neither the owner nor the laborer had formal stump grinder training, only brief general instructions from tool rental companies. The rental manager did not ask about the owner's knowledge of the smaller machine because he was a frequent customer, and the owner neither asked for nor received the instruction manual. The report notes the maker's manual warns against anyone else being within 75 feet while the machine grinds.
What the report recommends
The report recommends that landscaping companies make sure stump grinder operators are trained and follow safety procedures. Its list of precautions covers checking for debris and buried objects, good footing and a clear exit, positioning below the stump on a slope, using a barrier against thrown debris, keeping everyone else 75 feet away and never modifying the machine. It adds that training should warn that ropes or chains must never be attached to a grinder while it runs, and that an eye hook is for moving the machine when it is off. A second recommendation is that homeowners hire only landscapers certified by organizations such as the Tree Care Industry Association or the International Society of Arboriculture, because a certified arborist would have judged which machine could reach the roots.
The standards behind these precautions are in the guide to chippers and stump grinders.
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