NARRATOR: Back in South Carolina, Eustace and Joseph
angle to bring down a 200-foot pine without crushing anything
or anyone on the ground below.
[chainsaw]
There she goes!
At least you had enough cut there that it isn't swing
it around into that building. - Thank goodness.
That was about where we want it to fall.
This was the easy one.
[laughter]
NARRATOR: With one down, it's on the tree number two.
We could use that leaning one to kind
of catch this one as it fell down,
and cradle it off of the building.
NARRATOR: But this one is already
dead and more dangerous.
What controls the falling of a tree is the center of the tree.
If that part is rotten, you don't have any influence.
It just could fall anywhere.
And so taking out a dead tree is pretty risky.
And so we're going to put the extra precaution of putting
a rope on it with a block and tackle,
and that hopefully will give us the influence
to put some serious pull on it to pull
it away from the building.
Are you going to have enough to make it
over our anchor point over there?
Maybe. I don't know.
Here, you pull on that and I'll walk it.
NARRATOR: The block and tackle is anchored to a more stable
tree to provide added leverage.
Get slow, but keep going.
- One foot. - Keep trying.
Yeah, that looks good.
By the time it's the top of that Magnolia tree,
you can just forget about it.
Turn around.
Abandon ship.
Whatever you need to do.
Just get out of there.
Because it's going to go where it's going to go by that point,
regardless.
But until then, you'll have enough power that you
can, like, start running.
Like you can get pretty far over there.
The further you get away, the safer you are anyway.
If he doesn't pull it hard enough and continuously enough,
or if he lets go too soon, it can just fall right back
towards the building.
So it's a real dance.
And success is on the line.
If we don't do it right, we lose the building.
Or get hurt.
Oh my gosh.
let's just do it.
Ready?
Yeah.
[chainsaw]
Keep pulling it if you can.
Whoa! Whoa!
Hold it steady just a second.
[inaudible] get it rocking.
Rock it back and forth.
Pull and release.
One, two, three.
NARRATOR: The goal is to pull it down without taking
the other tree with it.
There's vines holding it.
There's limbs holding it.
There we go. there we go.
[laughter]
NARRATOR: Now it's on to the third and final tree.
A 200-foot pine that's leaning precariously
above the farm building they're trying to protect.
Wow.
Now the worst one.
Yeah, that one's scary.
The stakes are a lot higher on this one.
It's leaning right towards the building.
It's going to be really hard to control.
I mean, it is right over it.
This wind seems like it's picking up.
You never know when you're going to get an unfortunate
gust the wind that's going to catch the top like a sail,
and push it in the wrong way.
So we're going to use the same block
and tackle that we used on that other dead tree.
But this is a really dangerous tree,
and so I want every bit of power that we can muster.
So we put two more pulleys in the system.
The more pulleys you have, the more exponential power
you gain.
[chainsaw]
- Ready? - Yeah.
We were able to pull that tree probably
20 or 30 degrees better than we thought was even possible.
And I'm so glad this is on the ground.
I don't have to worry about this anymore.
Oh my gosh.