City of Longmont Forestry Division takes training into the trees

On Friday, August 7, the City of Longmont’s Forestry Division hosted a joint training for arborists with Taddiken Tree Company, a Boulder-based arboreal management company. Held in Thompson Park, the annual full day training encompassed safety techniques for equipment operation, as well as procedures for assisting injured climbers.

Arborist training in Thompson Park.

Three stations were set up in the northwest corner of Thompson Park, cordoned off my caution tape. The groups of arborists rotated through them, learning how to safely operate a track lift crane, bucket crane truck and techniques for climbing trees with a rope and harness to rescue an injured climber. The training was preceded by classroom work, allowing time to properly address safety practices for those brave climbers.

The training with the bucket crane focused on both equipment operations and techniques to safely assist an operator that may have lost consciousness while raised up by the boom arm. Use of controls at all operation points, as well as how to carefully assess injuries, were the major aim of that station. One of Taddiken’s crew foreman, Michael Novitsky, led the training. “Today is about going through the motions and being safe,” he said.

120lb dummy suspended in tree during arborist training in Thompson Park. (Photo by Matt Maenpaa)

The biggest visual spectacle and the station requiring the most physicality, was the climbing rescue. Using a 120lb dummy dressed in gear and suspended in a harness, participants practiced safe ropework and injury assessment by scaling a tree and then safely returning to the ground with the dummy. This included communicating with the ‘victim’, noting the injuries, and then securing the dummy to themselves with assistance from participants and trainers below.

One of Longmont Forestry’s Senior Arborists, Adam Prue, was active in training and guiding other climbers. A former Taddiken employee, he joined the city Forestry Division in November. “It’s a pretty awesome, growing industry,” he said. “Every year there is new equipment and new gear, so doing these training sessions every year is ideal to stay on top of things and learn different scenarios.”

In addition to the work that Taddiken and the City of Longmont do in the classroom on a quarterly basis, employees are required to maintain up-to-date CPR and First Aid certifications. Trimming trees can be a dangerous business, especially in a city as green as Longmont, so it’s a relief that safety standards haven’t been pruned.