Abstract: On January 20, 1987, Employee #1, a member of a pulpwood logging crew, was working off State Highway 146, near Ruston, LA, cutting trees with a power saw. A tree became lodged in the branches of a nearby gum tree that forked into two major sections at the base of the trunk. Employee #1 had moved away from the gum tree and begun to cut another tree when a major portion of the gum tree broke off at the trunk, striking and killing him. The gum tree was hollow and decayed inside; the weight of the lodged tree, which did not itself break off until after the accident, had caused it to split. It did not appear that the decayed condition of the gum's trunk, the major contributing factor to the accident, was visible from the outside of the tree.