According to the expert assessment, the felling of the Stansvikinkallio was not carried out completely safely. However, the special investigator also reminds the activists of their own responsibility.
Stansvikinkallion safety regulations were violated in the logging that started on Thursday, special investigator Heikki Ovaskainen development and research company Metsätehosta estimates for HS. The fellings are part of the street works in the site plan area located in Kruunuvuorenranta and serve the construction of services in the nearby area and residential lots that have already been reserved.
At HS’s request, Ovaskainen familiarized himself with the video where the driver of the logging machine was working in the forest and the protesters are shouting warnings from behind the police tape. A photo taken of the situation shows a fir tree standing near the plane and a protester sitting on a branch of the fir tree.
The logging machine does not cut down large trees in the videos seen by HS.
A protester sat in a tree at the same time as a logging machine moved next to it in the Stansvikinkallio area on Thursday afternoon.
“Based on the pictures and videos, I would say that it is not safe to be so close to the logging machine that is logging,” Ovaskainen writes in his e-mail message.
According to Ovaskainen, the worst and even life-threatening risk in the situation are the so-called chain bullets. They can occur if the cutting machine’s blade chain breaks in the middle of felling a tree and the pieces start flying around at the speed of a bullet. Another danger is the domino effect, i.e. the fact that a falling tree knocks its neighbor upside down, in which case a safety gap may become necessary.
In the Stansvikinkallio area, the risk is increased by the nails hammered into the trees by the most radical activists. There are warning signs about them in the area, and city representatives have also found them in the trees. Also to watch out for are the metal nets wrapped around the bases of some trees, which could also harm the blade.
“On the site in question, it must have been planned that, with special caution, mechanical logging can be carried out like this, although it is not completely safe,” Ovaskainen writes.
He also reminds the demonstrators of their own responsibility and discretion in the situation.
“A forest site is a construction site, just like a construction site, for example. In other words, outsiders have nothing to do with it. A site visit is a separate matter.”
Logging safety distances are regulated in the regulation on the safety of logging work. In its fifth section, there is a mention that “the safety distance marked on the machine must be observed at machine sites”.
The engineer who drove the logging machine on Thursday Jouni Mikkonen says that the safety distance of the used machine has been 90 meters according to industry practice.
Mikkonen considers the blade chains of logging machines to be strong enough today that, in his opinion, there is practically no danger of a so-called chain bullet.
He also emphasizes that he only cut down small trees when the protester was sitting in the neighboring spruce. According to Mikkonen, the decision-making power to turn off or keep the machine running and to continue or stop the work in the situation did not belong to him, but to the police who supervised the demonstration and the city representatives who ordered the work.
Metal nets had been strung on some of the trees in the plan area.
Stansvikinkallion felling to prepare the street works continued on Friday with the help of loggers. However, the logging machine did not participate in them on Friday. According to the city’s estimate, the felling required by the street works would have been done in three to four days without interruptions.
The Suojelkaa Stansvik group and other protesters have demanded that the city refrain from deforestation in the plan area practically completely, or at least wait until the reassessment of the natural values of the area is completed and the city can then decide again on the plan and the fate of the area.
The city’s policy is to refrain from logging only on the part of the plan that is subject to review, i.e. especially on the eastern side of the area. In the north and west, on the other hand, future service and residential construction projects have been primed with felling and quarrying.
HS wrote extensively about the conflicting goals of the city, nature conservationists and local cottagers earlier in October.
Read more: The felling of disputed trees began in Helsinki
Read more: Such is the disputed forest of Stansvikinkallio, where the felling of trees may start as early as next week
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