RALEIGH, N.C. — Mowing at all national parks was suspended last week because of safety concerns after a maintenance worker cutting grass along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina fell to his death.
The National Park Service sent an order to its regional offices Friday to halt mowing at its 397 parks, which are spread across every state except Delaware.
The agency is reviewing safety procedures after 63-year-old Dana Bruce of Alexander died at the Haw Creek Overlook north of Asheville. The seasonal worker’s riding mower fell more than 140 feet down a boulder-strewn embankment May 7. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
“We take all accidents seriously and use them as an opportunity to learn so that this kind of accident does not happen again,” park spokesman Jeffery G. Olson wrote in an email.
In Acadia National Park, the only national park in Maine, the order hasn’t had any effect on the park’s operations, according to Keith Johnston, Acadia’s head of maintenance. Johnston said Wednesday that the park took immediate steps to provide additional training to its staff and was barred from mowing for only about 24 hours.
“The stand-down [order] was for a day and we got on it right away,” Johnston said.
Bruce was an Army medic who served in Vietnam and was working his third summer for the park service. He was trimming a 12- to 15-foot-wide area between a wooden guardrail and a cliff when he lost control of the zero-turn riding lawn mower and went over the edge, said Steve Stinnett, chief ranger for the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators are reviewing the accident, but did not return messages left by The Associated Press. A five-member National Park Service accident investigation team concluded its investigation Monday, but has not released its findings. Stinnett said it would be “months” before the results of that report are made public.
It is unclear how long the grass will grow unchecked nationwide. Olson said each park has a safety review checklist to complete before mowing can resume. The duration of the suspension will depend on the size of the park, the amount of equipment and the number of employees.
“Small parks with little to mow, few pieces of equipment to check, and few personnel to go through safety briefing and training will be back mowing in a matter of hours,” Olson wrote.
Larger parks could go without mowing for weeks.
“We will complete the safety self-certification process in the time required and ask park visitors for their patience if the grass gets a little long until we get back to mowing operation,” Olson wrote.
BDN writer Bill Trotter contributed to this report.
So one person falls and dies in an accident at a single park and they stop mowing in all parks? Is this an over reaction to an isolated case? Oh, why am I asking, this is government at ‘not’ work.
Here’s the lesson that needs to be written into federal policy: “Don’t ride the lawn mower too close to the edge of a cliff, you might fall off”. There – let’s get back to cutting the grass please.
How about adding that a 12 to 15 foot wide plot of grass should be mowed by walk behind mower not a riding mower.
good point!
Easy to say, but if that strip is 3 miles long, would you then write that it is a waste of money to pay a person to mow for 8 hours when 2 hours with a riding mower would do it?
I suspect the person was not really used to a ZTR mower, and the Feds reacted like Feds do when he fell to his unfortunate death. Let’s get the sledge hammer out to kill a gnat was the Fed reaction.
I had the same reaction-a bit of ‘overkill’ (no pun intended) ??
From the article: Johnston said Wednesday that the park took immediate steps to provide additional training to its staff and was barred from mowing for only about 24 hours.
What is wrong with stopping for only 24 hours such as Acadia did to review safety precautions with staff?
“Larger parks could go without mowing for weeks.”
I don’t know but have heard that the “zero turn” mowers are great but the levers you turn them with are not as easy to control as the “steering wheel” equipment most of us are used to. I see some zero turn mowers now come with a steering wheel just because of these problems.
Only to the untrained person.
You are mistaken. Actually they are easier to drive than vehicles with a steering wheel once you acclimate. My “guess” is that either the man had a medical problem or there was a mechanical malfunction with the machine.
Or he didn’t acclimate.
shhhhh look at the $$ theyre saving on gas and the break in pollution as well.
I find it amazing that thatwould stopall mowing nationwide. Perhaps we should ban driving until it can be determined how to stop all accidents. This is typical National Park Service bureacracy at its best.
I know, Obama just keeps it going.
Another good reason to privatize Gummint functions!
In another month all the parks will have a massive increase in fires due to lack of mowing. Sounds like a good trade off for a 63 yo guy who was not paying attention to what he was doing.
Or how long before snakes overrun the parks! What will they stop when a rattler bites a visitor?
No they will close all the parks until they do a study on the danger of rattlesnakes to visitors. [Grin]
Though fires and rattlesnakes are part of the natural experience, just as falling off of cliffs and dying is. Have we have become so civilized that we expect nature to be as safe as Disney World?
I put it this way, Mother Nature is a sweet little old lady that does not have near as many rules as you have to obey in the city. You should have adequate water as needed, adequate food as needed, adequate clothing as needed, adequate shelter as needed, and you should try not to hurt yourself. Of course if you break any of these little rules, Nature may kill you
Doubtful. Green grass doesn’t burn that well.
i see you didn’t read the article. the ban was for 24 hours.
I see YOU didn’t read the article.
“Larger parks could go without mowing for weeks.”
touche
:-)
It is sad, but it sounds as though the operator of the mower lost control. Why ban mowing in all locations? Oh, I almost forgot–the government believes in “share everything.”
They do need to halt everything and review their mowing methods in case there are other parks that mow the edge of a cliff with a riding mower. That is a hard way to go. As somebody already mentioned, that is what walk behind mowers are for.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to issue a statement to all the parks to review dangerous mowing near steep hills/cliffs instead of just banning all mowing??
Your suggestion would mean that the government/ NPS has common sense. This is a perfect example of the “one size fits all” concept of our government.
I really don’t want to laugh at this. I mean, a man is dead.
But really, stopping mowing nationwide due to one accident?
Only in government.
Gov’ Worker, once you have the union, you don’t have to have good judgement and they must keep you regardless. The only good thing I see here, is that once their was a worker, who apparently was indeed, working. Amazing.
You assume that a gov’t worker is in a union? I know facts won’t stop a good rant, but less than 1/2 of government workers are in a union, and chances are this worker was not. But, like I say, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good anti-gov’t, anti-union rant. They don’t have to be fact based, as you already know.
I wonder how many times it turned on the way down, bet it wasn’t zero.
I have no problem shutting down mowing operations for 24 hrs. Being a safety director I can certainly understand the need to get to the root cause of the fatality. As was the case in Acadia retraining was done during the 24 hr stand down a very small price to pay to hopefully keep another fatality from occurring again.
I am sorry for the gentleman’s accident that took his life.
But using a zero turn to mow 12- to 15-foot-wide area between a wooden guardrail and a cliff doesn’t pass a “common sense test” in ANY situation. Message to NPS: Can you say “Butt covering”?
(halting mowing nationwide is a bit of a stretch, but makes impressive, however insanely stupid, press)
To all the right wingers here using this tragic incident and the Park Service’s responsible response to it as a way to spout about “government bureaucracy” and the rest, first, I can’t imagine that any of you right wingers would even care about this story since you obviously would never, ever use something so “socialist” as a national park or a state park. Since you all hate anything public, I would expect that you would never lower yourselves to anything so “terrible” as visiting such a public place. Right? I would never expect a right winger to visit Acadia or Baxter, or even the local public playground for that matter. You know, that “awful dirty wasteful government spending” you all distain so much. Why would you even want to go there and enjoy natural beauty and fresh air when you can go visit a nice private shopping mall instead? So again, hyprocritcal right wingers, why do you even care what the Park Service chose to do here? I would never expect to see a right winger in a national park. Next, for those right wingers who have difficulty reading, I would suggest you get someone to re-read it for you, which looks like most of you. The article clearly says that the halt and review order would be very temporary for many locations and maybe a bit longer for others as they review current practices and equipment measures and rectify any problems to insure whatever happened in the accident didn’t re-occur anywhere else. Gee, that seems to make sense to those with common sense. What do you think your beloved ULTRA-SOCIALIST military does when tragic accidents occur? Same thing, right wingers. A person DIED here, in case you missed that part as none of you “Jesus loving” right wingers had a word to say about that. They just need to look at what happened and try to make sure it doesn’t happen anywhere else, and it won’t mean much if any inconvenience for any visitors. It is just about reviewing and updating any mowing procedures to insure safety. Nothing is being closed off to the public or anything like that. Nothing will affect visitation to the parks. So enough of the right wing foolishness. It is just that. Foolish, as usual.
All I can say is WOW Tinserblic … try decaf! You gotta be kiddin’ me??? It takes a right-winger to see the idiocy of a bureaucracy shutting down a routine maintenance activity nationwide? And if you agree with that perspective you must HATE national parks??? OMG … and you bring Jesus and military into the discussion. Really … try decaf. Foolish you say …
I will give you one point I do NOT use parks. I hate them. I am a backwoods Mainer and I use the land I own to feed my family wife, daughter, two grandsons. Funny the “public parks” IE land owned by the public banns hunting?? Other then that you may want to see a doctor I think it is time to up your meds.
hopefully they look at the mower, could of had a valve failure, he could have pulled left and it went right, right over a cliff.. zero turn are incredibly responsive, but they have been out for a while and I doubt this guy was new at it.. 15 to 20 feet wide to a cliff isn’t much as some have pointed out,,but how long was this patch? mowing the center divider on a highway is just as dangerous and about the same width in spots.. cliff or cars there is always a danger. I doubt it was necessary to ban all mowing though.. kinda like banning all food cause you got one bad chicken…
Problem looked at and solved in 24 hours; I wish the feds could work that fast on more issues.