John B. Leonard and his wife Linda Leonard at their Chehalis home. / Courtesy photo
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – The logger injured by a large maple limb in Salkum yesterday has died.
John B. Leonard was well known in Lewis County, a logger all his life, according to a family friend.
He used to have J.B. Leonard Logging in Chehalis, Marlene Maki said.
He and her husband have known each for six decades, she said.
“John was 69, he acted like he was 39 years old,” Maki said. “He’d pack hay, he was full of life, that’s for sure.”
Lewis County Fire District 8 Chief Duran McDaniel said an investigator from the state Labor and Industries came out to the site yesterday and was to return today.
Firefighters were called just after 9 a.m. yesterday to acreage just north of the 2200 block of U.S. Highway 12 in between Kennedy Road and Sierra Drive, according to McDaniel.
Leonard was loaded into an ambulance and transported to the Salkum Fire station where they were met by a helicopter that flew him to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
It was just two men working, according to McDaniel. At first it appeared vibrations from a logging shovel shook the limb loose, McDaniel said, but he has since come to understand it happened somewhat differently.
“It appears a falling tree caught a limb, and came back and got the poor gentleman,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel described the piece of wood as perhaps 6 inches in diameter, and 20 feet long, before the operator jumped down and sawed the limb to get it removed from the man.
“The operator and the cutter were the best of friends,” he said.
A spokesperson for Labor and Industries said they are investigating a logging fatality in Lewis County, but had no further information this afternoon.
The death is the third from logging in Lewis County since the beginning of the year.
In mid-January, 63-year-old Alex Oberg, of Toledo, was killed while cutting timber alone in the Toledo area. The sheriff’s office said a tree fell onto Oberg as he was employing a “domino” tree falling technique.
Last month, 21-year-old Tyler Bryan, also from Toledo, was working north of Morton when – according to the initial information from the sheriff’s office – a log being pulled up a slope by a cable began spinning and struck him.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter