PHOENIX -- A man is dead after being trapped more than 50 feet up in a palm tree, but fire officials say it probably wasn't the chainsaw wound to his leg that killed him.
The man was hired to cut palm trees at a residence on Earll Drive near 26th Place. At one point, a portion of the palm tree he was working on slid, fell down and trapped him.
The man's two coworkers climbed the tree to help him before someone called 911 an estimated 15 minutes later, according to the Phoenix Fire Department.
A technical rescue crew was dispatched, and firefighters managed to coax one of the coworkers down before climbing the tree and bringing the second down.
According to Steven Oetinger, a member of the crew that attempted the rescue, when they cleared the brush at the top of the tree and reached the victim, he was dead.
"When we got to the victim, the victim was not breathing (and) did not have a pulse," Oetinger said. "The crown of the tree was pretty much sitting on top of his lap."
A chainsaw had also severely wounded the man's leg.
"They said he had a pretty good laceration," said Battalion Five Chief Jim Walter. "They said it was at least down to the bone."
However, Walter said, "That's probably not what killed him. It was the fact that he couldn't breathe with the weight of the palm fronds on his chest."
When a crown of a palm tree falls, "you have several hundred pounds -- up to a thousand pounds -- on you … You just can't breathe," Walter said.
Oetinger said this sort of incident is a common occurrence, and fire crews make it a point to train for it.
"Palm tree workers will get up into the tree, and large portions of the dead prongs will break away from the tree, slide down on top of them, entrapping them," he said.
The name of the victim has not been released. The Phoenix Police Department will investigate the incident.
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