Señor

A monthly publication of the Tree Care Industry Association
January 2005
Number 269

Preventing Accidents by
Studying Near-Misses
Heinrich
T he Heinrich
Pyramid
SERIOUS
ACCIDENTS

MINORACCIDENTS

E

ven though there’s no injury and no damage to your equipment or
the client’s property, the so-called “near-miss” needs to be treated
just as seriously. Why?

There is a sayingamong loss control specialists, “Incidence breeds Severity”
Your parents understood this concept when they harped, “You’re lucky, you
could have put someone’s eye out with that thing!” Many studieshave shown
that there is a statistical relationship between incidents and serious accidents.
This idea was first published by a guy named Heinrich back in 1931, and it was
called the AccidentPyramid. The illustration to the left shows what it looks like.
The exact ratios in the pyramid will vary depending on how accidents are
defined, the cause of the accident, and the occupation or industrysector it is
applied to. The important thing to remember is that there is ALWAYS some sort
of pyramidal relationship between the “stupid stuff that happens”, the “band aid
injuries”, and the reallydisastrous event.

NEAR-MISSES
Here’s why a near-miss is such a great
learning experience: except for the
outcome, a near-miss resembles an
accident in almost every other respect. It
has thesame direct cause, and very
similar if not identical contributing factors,
and the same root cause. If you can
figure out what went wrong and correct

Look inside for:
Treeworker subscriptions........... 2
Saw maintenance ........... 3
OSHA Files ........... 4
Arborist Quiz ........... 5
Arborist News ........... 6
Mr. Safety ........... 7

. . . continued on page 2
1

Near-Misses- from pg.1
the problems, you can prevent a
serious incident.
There is one big flaw and one big
danger in applying this theory:
You can’t assume that you’ll
have ten near-misses before you...