Abstract: At approximately 3:15 p.m. on February 27, 2006, Employee #1, a sawmill employee, accessed the back side of the wood chipper (Morbark Model Number 480) in order to remove a wood jam in the chipper refeed chute with a wood board. One of the owners of the company saw Employee #1 behind the chipper and motioned for him to come out to talk to a customer about a returned product. The owner continued on, expecting Employee #1 to follow. At some point, Employee #1 elevated his head into the unguarded bottom portion of the shaker bin's counterbalance housing (approximately 5-ft 10.5-in. from the floor) and was struck by the rotating counterbalance. The outer portion of the counterbalance's swing radius was located approximately 7 in. away from the side guard of the housing. Another employee, working in an adjacent area with a visual line of sight to the chipper, only saw Employee #1 fall backwards from the chipper to the cement floor. The employer did not have a lockout and tag out program or procedures in place for locking and tagging out machines in the sawmill for service and maintenance activities, nor did the employer have specific written procedures for the proper method of clearing jams in the chipper machine. Employee #1 suffered a head fracture and later died.