The logging industry has been tragic for one California woman who lost an uncle, her father, and even her fiancé in accidents on the job.
When 20-year-old Mayari Aguayo, the fiancé of novice logger Alexis Cedillo-Osorio, discovered that her 22-year-old intended had been killed on his second day in training at Anderson Logging near Fort Bragg, California, it was a familiar story, because she had already lost two other members of her family to logging accidents.
Cedillo-Osorio was killed on April 25 when a log fell onto him while he was working as a “choke setter,” a worker who ties cables to logs to drag them up hillsides.
The young betrothed and mother of the fallen worker’s 3-week-old girl told The Press Democrat that she never wanted her man to go into the logging industry, but he “insisted on wanting to go.”
The couple had plans to marry after a five-year relationship and the birth of their daughter — but it is not to be.
Aguayo already lost an uncle and her father in 2000 in two separate logging accidents. Both were tree cutters who were killed by falling trees while working in the northern California forests. Along with the three deaths, Aguayo has five other family members who have been seriously injured working in the logging industry.
“If only I’d insisted more for him not to go, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation for the third time,” Aguayo told the media.
According to the latest Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, logging is, by far, the most dangerous occupation in the United States, with 132.7 fatal work injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2015. Fishing came a distant second, with 54.8 deaths. The overall average in the U.S. that year was 3.4.
Donations are being taken by the Medicino Coast Children’s Fund at http://www.mccf.info/.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
Photo: file
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