60 | T T Russell Fredric Logging accident hones safety plans Health and safety is the number one priority for A&R Logging. A & R Logging FORESTRY Leading the charge in on-site fuel delivery in New Zealand for 30 years. minitankers.eastcoast@gmail.com 0274 506 356 Professional tree harvest solutions drawn from experience, research and plant utilization. 021 939 500 aranakuru@arlogging.co.nz A&R Logging Being resuscitated by his father following an accident while working with a logging crew has strongly influenced how Arana Kuru sees life and workplace safety. Arana owns and runs A & R Logging, a Gisborne-based logging business that employs 27 staff, with his wife Runa. “In 1999 I had an accident in the forest while I was working with my father and his logging crew, I got hit in the head by a tree and died on site. I was not breathing and unresponsive or anything, and got brought back to life,” Arana says. “He picked me up out of the mud, it was a cold winters day, cried out to God and said ‘don’t take my boy now please’.” After having mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and being revived, a rescue helicopter arrived and transported Arana to hospital. “I’ve been told the tree hit my head like somebody standing with a baseball bat and whacking you at point blank range.” The accident was caused by Arana approaching from a blind position a logger who was operating machinery, consequently he was not visible to the operator. The force of the impact was tremendous. “He was pulling stems out of the stack and the head of the tree was wedged in the stack and when it finally popped out the stem was bent like a boomerang and when it released was when it hit me. I happened to be standing right there when all that energy released so I’m pretty lucky to still be alive.” “He picked me up out of the mud, it was a cold winters day, cried out to God and said ‘don’t take my boy now please’.” Incredibly, Arana suffered just a burst ear drum and concussion and returned to work after three weeks. After the accident and his second chance at life, he decided to travel and worked in Iceland for nine years, eventually for a property developer before returning home and subsequently gained a degree in civil engineering. Arana and Runa established A & R Logging in October 2013 when they bought an existing business which had hauler crew comprising six staff clear felling. “We had a good contract with Hikurangi Forest Farms and we just ran that configuration for four years. We produced around 70,000 tonnes a year.” The company now produces in the vicinity of 210,000 tonnes of logs a year. Environmentally, A & R Logging assesses each site for best location to set up machinery to achieve the least impact on the terrain and adheres strictly to the consent conditions for the particular block it is operating in. “All our employees are locals and have a lot of respect for their land. This is why we do our best to preserve its natural appearance.” Its 27 staff operate in three crews and Arana and Runa see their company as a whanau business that provides for the many families that benefit from it. Unsurprisingly, health and safety are the “number one” priority for the company. The three crews are fully mechanised, and A & R Logging operates a comprehensive range of equipment, including four high end processors which cost about $1.2 million each, and has just one manual tree feller over the three crews. “That’s where we are invested heavily, to keep men off the ground. If I’ve got one worker cutting down trees, that’s better than having four cutting down trees.” “There’s no price point on it for me. If it’s unviable to do a job safely then we simply won’t do it.” An important aspect of health and safety is in creating a good culture that inherently establishes safe practices and this is something that goes beyond a paper exercise, Arana says. “We all look out for each other and that’s not something that you just write up and tick the box for; that’s something that happens naturally.”
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