The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1900-07-07
CAR ACCIDENT IN TACOMA
SIXTY PERSONS WERE KILLED,
Eighteen Injured in an Accident
Electric Car Went over Grade
Down Sexty Feet Into the Deep
GuIch.

IdCOuids w dSl ~ CtOMdcO
trio car from South Tacoma crashed
through a bridge at Seventeenth and d
streets at $3.50 Wednesday, morning
Twenty We're killed and thirty injured and
horribly mangled. People were coming
into the city to witness the celebration.
The most appalling accident ever known
in the history of Tacoma occurred yester-
day, when at $3.50 an Edison car, loaded
with excursionists coming to see the pa
rade, was dashed down 20 feet over the
bridge at the gulch where the track runs
from d street, burying the passen-
gers, among whom were many women and
children, under the wreck of the car. The
car turned completely over and mangled
the unfortunate victims into UNI ecogniz-
able shapes as the debris crashed on down
the steep side of the gulch.
Where the car went off there Is sharp
curve, at the foot of steep grade. Just
how the accident occurred will never be
known, but as the car struck the curve,
instead of following the rails, it whirled
completely over and pitched from the
bridge, striking on its top, the heavy
trucks and body of the car crashing the
frail upper works to splinters and smash
ing down upon the mass of men, women
and children, with which the car was
loaded.
In the gulch a confused mass Of wrecked
car bridge timbers, and killed and
mangled people made the heart of the be-
holder sink. Telephone messages for doc
tors from the St. Joseph hospital to the
central station brought quick response
n
and every physician in the city was mott
fed. Telephone wires were kept hot with
repeated calls and not an effort was lost
to get every available doctor in town.
As the bodies of the victims were
brought up out of the gulch, some of
them mangled out of all recognition,
heartrending scenes were everywhere
seen as mothers found their dead and
mangled children. Others were wildly
rushing around looking for friends that
had been on the fatal car, and everywhere
scattered about ON the ground at the edge
of the gulch were bodies of men, women
and children some of them std alive and
some Just gasping their last breath, often
with nobody to give them the least atten-
ton, so busy was the crowd in the work
of rescue or in hunting for friends who
might be in the wreck.
Mangled remains of the victims were
brought up out of the gulcn in blankets
and gunnysacks, and those not killed
were borne to the waiting cars to carry
them to their homes or to the hospitals
the sight making the stoutesJ hcarc sink,
The fire department, as well as the po-
lice patrol, was early on the ground to
| assist in the work of rescue
Twenty-Five dead were counted around
on the ground or on the bridge, where
they were half covered up with gunny-
sacks, or lay stark and margled in pools
of blood under the feet of the multitude,
who passed them with shudder to look
at the wreck far down the bank of the
gulch More than as many more were
carried away in carriages, anbulances AMI
the patrol wagon and in the cars which
the railway company sent TO the scene to
carry away the wounded.
Thirty-Five Were Killed.