Updated at 6:14 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
A 21-year-old man was killed in a logging accident yesterday north of Morton.
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office reports it occurred about noon at a logging site about a mile and a half east of the 1100 block of state Route 7.
[1]Tyler Bryan, 1992 – 2014
Aid responded and CPR was conducted for up to 45 minutes but the young man from Toledo died at the scene, Sgt. Rob Snaza said.
Snaza said the victim was working at the lower end of a slope about 1,500 feet from a landing zone when one of three logs being pulled up by a cable began to spin and struck him either in the head or chest.
The Lewis County Coroner’s Office identifies him as Tyler Bryan, of Winlock, as he recently moved there.
Bryan and his fiancee Sadie Firth just got their first home together last week, and are expecting a baby boy in April, according to a friend.
David Brosius who has known the Toledo native – who left high school to become a logger – for the past 10 years, compared his friend’s standing in the small town to that of the Duke brothers in Hazzard County.
“Everybody knew him, everybody loved him,” Brosius said. “He was a sweetheart.”
Brosius said two of Bryan’s co-workers who are close friends were at his side immediately after the accident yesterday.
Snaza from the sheriff’s office said he didn’t know who Bryan was working for.
An inspector from the Department of Labor and Industries went out there and is investigating today, according to a spokesperson for the state agency. The logging business is Brintech, based in Mossyrock, Elaine Fischer said.
It was just last month when another Toledo resident was killed while cutting timber. Sixty-three-year-old Alex Oberg was working alone at a site in the Toledo area on Jan. 16.
Oberg was not an employee, but the father of the owner of Dawn Til Dusk, based in Toledo, according to L&I. The sheriff’s office said a tree fell on Oberg as he was employing a “domino” tree falling technique.
Brosius upon getting word of Bryan’s death, set up an online donation account [2], knowing Firth will now be a single mother and thinking of the family’s funeral expenses, and, he said, because he felt like he wanted to do something to help.