OSHA investigating Down to Earth Tree Service crane tip-over

OSHA is investigating Down to Earth Tree Service LLC after the company’s crane truck tipped over while working at a Bay Village, Ohio residence May 11.

Local station News 5 Cleveland reported the company’s owner said the ground gave out under the crane’s stabilizers.

The stabilizers damaged the home of Julia Sciarappa, who hired the company to cut down a tree in her backyard, and her neighbor’s home.

Crews worked overnight to free the crane’s boom from a utility pole and lower it to the ground.

During an interview last week, Sciarappa said OSHA investigators visited the neighborhood twice to inspect the damage and were interested in seeing pictures from that night.

“You just hope that OSHA can bring all these safety precautions to the forefront of [tree service companies’] mind to prevent this from ever happening again,” she said.

Dangers of tree service crane tip-overs

The Olmsted Falls-based company is not the only tree service provider to experience a crane tipover, especially in the tree-dense Northeast.

In 2018, a crane tipped over and an outrigger went through the corner of a house in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. The owner of Mike’s Professional Tree Service said a piston on the outrigger failed, causing it to collapse into itself, tipping the crane.

Last month, two tree service cranes tipped over in Massachusetts - one in Cotuit April 9 and another in Norwell April 14. In both cases the cranes fell into unmarked, abandoned septic tanks.

In 2024, a similar incident occurred in Wynantskill, New York, when a crane truck stabilizer fell through a septic tank, dropping a worker attached to the line over 100 feet to the ground. Miraculously, the worker survived.

In 2018, OSHA investigated a crane tip over in Morrisville, Vermont, in which one of the outriggers was not deployed. The crane fell in the direction lacking support, striking a worker.