Ken wrote:
What have been the worst (serious or humorous) handyman or handywoman
accidents that you've experienced so far (or someone you know, or saw
it happen to, got to experience) and please elaborate on what
unfortunately went wrong.



This from yesterday's "The Sunday Times Magazine" (London, UK), in an
article about clearing up the debris following the "Great Storm" of 1987:

"...In the hands of novices, chainsaws do not cream smoothly through
yielding timber~ they buck and twist like cats. The accidents were
horrific. Untrained men would hack at the upper branches of bent or
leaning trees, oblivious to the laws of physics. "There is a huge
tension when a tree falls," says Ray Hawes. "When people cut through
them and take the weight off the top, at a certain stage they will
spring back." The result is like a Roman ballista, except that the
missile catapulted 20 yards is not a rock but a human body with a
screaming chainsaw. In the worst case, recalled by Peter Creasey, the
Trust’s head warden at Box Hill in Surrey, a man took the precaution of
harnessing himself to a bough. His tragedy was to choose the wrong tree
— not the one he was sawing, but the one it was leaning against. The
ballista tore him apart."

David