Man hurt by falling concrete pole

A landscape worker trimming trees in Charlestown was seriously injured yesterday morning when a concrete pole came crashing down on his head, witnesses and officials said.

Edgar W. Teas, 25, of Woburn was using straps to guide tree limbs to the ground on Medford Street when a limb cut by another worker landed on a power line at about 9 a.m., pulling down the 29-foot-tall pole, witnesses said.

"It was a freak accident," said Lieutenant James O'Brien of the Boston Fire Department, who helped administer basic life support to Teas. "The guy was just in the wrong spot. A branch falls on a wire that's not even close to the pole, you don't expect the pole to come down."

Witnesses said the accident happened quickly.

"I heard a loud crash, and I thought one of the trees might have hit a vehicle," said Michael Lee, a Boston Housing Authority employee who was working across the street. "When I turned around, the man in the tree asked me to call 911. I saw a man on the ground with severe head injuries. I don't think he saw the pole coming."

Teas fell on top of the power line, temporarily went into respiratory arrest, and faded in and out of consciousness, O'Brien said.

He was in fair condition last night at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Teas worked for Cut Above Landscaping of Burlington. A man identified by witnesses as the employee who was cutting limbs from the tree said, "It's pretty upsetting."

Teas's mother said she was informed by the company's owner about her son's injury immediately after the accident, but said she did not know the extent of his injuries until her sister played an audio recording of a television news report over the telephone.

"I started crying when she played the tape," Trudy Teas of Brockton said by phone. "I am literally trembling with everything that's going on."