Up the poll
Hamish and I were running into a village and something caught my eye, there was a guy about 25m up a 40m poplar tree. But the strange thing was that he was chopping the top of the tree off. There was a rope attached to the tree 10m above his head. The rope was being held by 4 guys who were pulling on the tree top to try and angle it not to fall on the home below. The tree chopper was dangling there trying to fell it. We could see that this was going to end in tears, so we decided to hang around and se what was going to unfold.
It was a tiresome job. A few chops and the guy would rest, he would crawl round and round the tree dangle from different branch, then carry on, slowly copping deeper and deeper into the tree. I had positioned myself over the gate to video this. Hamish had climbed over the fence to take some pictures as he did not want the power lines in the way. The villager chopped away and we clicked away. We could see it was getting closer and closer. The instructions were starting to fly. The tension on the rope was increased.
Suddenly there was a load crack as the top of the tree parted, the wood chopper sprung backwards, nearly falling, he just managed to grab hold of a branch in the process he dropped his chopper which crashed on the roof of the home below. There was shouting and commotion as the guys heaved on the rope trying to steer the falling tree away from the home. As it picked up speed crashing through the branches below, it seemed to suddenly twist off to the right and in the process it lurched out forwards. The tree top came crashing down, and then swung again, right into the high tension power line all 11,000 volts of it. There was a massive explosion and orange flames shout a few meters into the air as the power lines twisted touched and began to dance around like three enraged serpents. Hamish was standing right under the lines; he just bolted shouting trying to avoid getting roasted. He was like a multi-jointed grasshopper as legs, camera and the rest dodged flames cables and branches. Some how he made it around the side of the house and to finally to safety. Everything was now heading in my direction, tree, power lines as well as a wall of angry cracking orange flame. I ducked and bolted out of the gate and into the road. In the process nearly got swotted by a truck as ran across to the other side of the road, where I could survey the damage at a distance.