Inside the deadliest job in America

COOS BAY, Ore. — Mostly employed in densely forested pockets of the Pacific Northwest and the South, loggers have the highest rate of fatal on-the-job injuries of any civilian occupation in the nation, outpacing roofers, hunters and underground mining machine operators.

About 100 of every 100,000 logging workers die from work injuries, compared with 4 per 100,000 for all workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“There is a mix of physical factors — heavy equipment and, of course, the massive trees,” said Marissa Baker, a professor of occupational health at the University of Washington who has researched the logging industry. “Couple that with steep terrain and unforgiving weather and the rural aspect of the work, and it leads to great danger.”

In the most rural stretches of Oregon, where swaths have been scarred by the clear-cutting of trees, many workers decide the risk is worth it. Most loggers here earn around $29 an hour. And average timber industry wages are 17% higher than local private-sector wages, according to a recent report from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.

Logging operates mostly year round, with workers usually bouncing among companies — sometimes called outfits — where pay can vary according to the specific job that needs to be done. But the industry has declined steeply since the 1990s, partly because of competition from other countries, including Brazil and Canada, and years of legal battles as conservationists seek to limit logging in old-growth forests.

In 1990, 11,000 Oregonians worked in the logging industry, including those who take down trees and drive trucks — a figure that had dropped to 4,400 by 2024, according to federal data.

When Joe Benetti moved to Coos Bay in the late 1970s from Reno, Nevada, more than a dozen lumber mills were in the area, he said. Today, there are just a handful, and Benetti, the mayor, said the local economy relied mainly on tourism from a nearby casino and a golf resort.

“Our timber industry is just not what it used to be,” he said.

Yet for many people in the small forest towns along the Coast Range, logging still offers the promise of a more prosperous life.

That was what drew Eduardo Mendoza Arias to Coos Bay.

After arriving in the United States from Mexico as a child, he lived in California’s Central Valley and worked in orchards. Mendoza Arias then moved to Oregon and began looking for jobs in logging in the early 2000s.

Soon after he arrived, he met his girlfriend, Jennifer, through friends. The couple eventually married and had three daughters — Sabrina, Marcela and Monica. Mendoza Arias supported the family on his salary, which ranged from $20 to $35 an hour.

“It’s really some of the best-paying work around,” said Jennifer Mendoza Arias, who grew up in the area.

On weekends, he played in a local soccer league with other immigrants from Latin America, and the family enjoyed taking camping trips. The couple loved to go to country music concerts and had a tradition of serving hot meals at a homeless shelter around the holidays. Stress about work and finances led to tension in their marriage, Jennifer Mendoza Arias said, and her husband sometimes drank too much. But she loved him and the life they built together.

In 2006, Eduardo Mendoza Arias started working at Riverside Logging, a company with fewer than 20 employees. He spent his shifts harvesting Douglas firs and operating a yarder, a huge machine used to move logs from one area of a job site to another.

Jennifer Mendoza Arias recalled hearing from her husband for years about the stresses of his job — a fear, for example, that his yarder would slip down a steep hillside. He sometimes needed to take time off, she said. “It really shook his nerves,” she said.

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Eduardo Mendoza Arias, who was 39, packed his lunch, fed the family’s dog and headed to the job site, a desolate stretch outside the city. As he and colleagues worked the 60-acre expanse, clearing trees, rain pummeled down.

Sometime around noon, a co-worker radioed to Mendoza Arias, who was on the yarder, and told him it appeared that some of the equipment wasn’t processing the wood correctly, according to an Oregon OSHA report. After Mendoza Arias got out of the yarder’s cab to inspect the equipment, he slipped and fell. A piece of his clothing got tangled in the rotating shaft, and he was pulled into the machine, which crushed him.

The company did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Since 2019, Oregon OSHA has conducted 156 inspections of logging companies, resulting in the identification of 292 violations and total initial penalties of $231,862, said Aaron Corvin, a spokesperson for the agency.

Most of those inspections were scheduled, Corvin said. “That is testimony to our emphasis on identifying and correcting hazards before an accident occurs, or a worker is injured or killed,” he added.

The danger of the job did not dissuade Dennis Root, 53, who started in the business at 17, drawn by the financial rewards as well as the adrenaline rush.

“There is a pride and thrill seeker in being a logger,” he said. “Out here, we live and breathe logging.”

Root has worked for several small independent companies near the city of Sheridan, about an hour south of Portland. On a recent morning, he left his home in darkness at 4:30 and headed to a job site along a rural stretch. He’s a hooktender, acting as the foreman for his logging crew. His 18-year-old son is now a logger.

The sloped terrain in much of coastal Oregon makes it difficult to harvest timber, Root said. And the wet weather this time of year, he said, makes it even more challenging.

“Everyone needs to be on the same page or it can get bad real fast,” he said.

In 2003, Root was struck in the head by a log, an injury that left him with a concussion and required facial reconstruction surgery.

“That about ended it for me,” he said. In fact, throughout the more than 30 years he has been a logger, Root has quit three times — sold his boots, helmets, hickory shirts — and done something else. He built houses. He did welding work. But each time, after a few months, the forest called him back.

In 2019, a man working with Root was killed when a log struck him. The crew tried to resuscitate him, but by the time an emergency medical helicopter arrived, he had died.

“There is a trauma that stays with you,” Root said, his voice trailing off, “but you just deal with it and go back to work.”

Back in Coos Bay, Jennifer Mendoza Arias has struggled financially since her husband’s death.

She works odd jobs around town, mowing grass and removing and hauling yard debris. While she owns the home that she and her husband lived in, her earnings help cover her car loan and groceries. Sometimes, as she did one evening this fall, she visits their favorite Mexican restaurant — a place where they sipped margaritas, laughed and ate carne asada.

She pulled out her iPhone and scrolled through photos of them. Through her cracked screen, she stared down at a boyish Eduardo Mendoza Arias, who was grinning with his arm around a friend as they played cards.

“There is nothing he liked more than to be outside and getting dirty,” she said. “Working with his hands was his specialty. Logging came naturally.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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