Fearful Sawmill Accident.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1694, 23 July 1875, Page 2

Fearful Sawmill Accident.

A pearful accident occurred at Mr Ebenezer Gibbons' Sawmills, Awitu, Manukau Heads. At 3 p.m. yesterday (Thursday), a boat, pulled by four men, got up to Onehunga from the Heads, having on board it a man named John Burns, with his right arm completely severed from the body, hanging merely by a piece of the skin. It appears that Burns, who was usually employed at the mill in getting logs down a tramway to tho pits on trucks drawn by a horse, had been so employed yesterday morning, when just as the horse was approaching an incline in the tram, and where the trucks were likely to have run on the horse had they not been stopped, he ran towards the animal for the purpose of taking hold of him, when he slipped on the tram and fell with his right arm across one of the wooden rails, and before he could recover himself the two wheels of one of the trucks had passed over his arm between the elbow and Bhoulder, the flange of the wheel completely shattering the bone to a frightful extent. The blood which flowed freely from the wound was stopped, aad the sufferer at once taken by Mr Gardiner, the manager, in a boat to Onehunga, and on arrival at Mr Gibbons' yard he was immediately forwarded to the Provincial Hospital in a spring cart, where he was attended to. The log which was on the truck at the time is estimated at about four tons weight. The skin connecting the arm to the body was removed on gettiDg to the hospital. The sufferer had suffered such a shock that he did not understand the extent of his injury, but had lost all hopes of having the injured limb restored.