Boom Lift Case Study

WOOSTER — Firefighters rescued a 72-year-old Wooster man who was stranded in a boom lift bucket after the piece of equipment tipped over while he and another man were trimming tree branches around noon Thursday.
Melvin Witmer, 72, and another man were trimming trees outside his house north of Bowman Street when the boom lift apparently traversed down a slope in his front yard and toppled. As the bucket and aerial arm fell, it pulled down power lines with it.
Dale Denny was down the street in his house watching TV when all of a sudden the television went black. He thought he must have done something, but he heard a loud noise and everything went black.
One neighbor described the sound like a bomb exploding, while Denny said, “It was like two

The service was expected to be out until 7 p.m. Monday, but that would depend upon how the restoration process went, spokeswoman Vikki Michalski said. Three spans of wire were pulled down, and a cross arm was broken. The pole was near fuses, and they were blown. Because they were near a fuse box, there was no way to reroute power, she said.
The boom lift fell on its side, and one of its wheels were touching the ground. The bucket remained about 25-30 feet in the air.
The other man (the Wooster Fire Department has not released his name) started to climb down the aerial arm partially and eventually lowered himself and dropped to the ground, Witmer said.
“I told him, ‘Stay where you’re at; stay where you’re at.’ I didn’t want him to get killed.”
The tree Witmer was trimming prevented him from seeing the ground. “I couldn’t see it was going off the edge,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was on a ridge.”
Witmer listened to his own advice and stayed put until the firefighters conducted an aerial rescue. However, from the ground, it didn’t appear he was going to stand pat.
“I told him to stay up there until the ambulance gets here,” said Stephanie Brooks, a neighbor. “He is always doing something around the