Year: 1879

KASsAs CITY, No, February IA
| terrible accident occurred about 80 O'Clock


this morning, at the foot OF Grand Avenue


in the cut being made for the Chicago and
| Alton railroad. At that hour the cut, with
its almost perpendicular walls ninety feet
high, caved in and buried the men and


their teams under siI thousand yards OF
falling eIrth.


THERE WERE FOUR TEAMS IL THE CUT


at the time and ten men working at each
| team. Besides these there were the fore
man, james McCarty, and his clerk and
| two men working with picks. The walls
| had become very dry and were crumbling
| and falling in shovelsiul continually, 50
that when the dirt bagan to rattle down the
| sides the men thou hit it nothing unusual.
One of the drivers just coming iuto the cut
sssd he saw


LITTLE PATCH OF DIRT


fall from near the top but it was such 2
common thing that he was ashamed to
speak of il. In moment afterwards he
heard rumbling sound and looking ahead
saw the south wall break loose 8 the top and
slide down the perpendicular declivitY. i,
struck first al the bottom of the wall srI -
llDTr NsIi tSli Oh tsldl WHICH tdLl4S Ms
IT RUSHED CLEAR ACROSS


the bottom of the cut heaping up in an in
slant a .reat mountain of earth and bury
ing beneath its awful weight men, teams
and wagons. Six men we're taken cut dead
and three badly wounded, one OF whom Is
now diving. The remarkable feature OF the
calamity j. that so few were killed Of the
forty iour men who were working on the
syot now covered by twenty feet OF earth.
THE FRANTIC LABOREFS


attempting to rush from under the huge
mass that was falling found their way
blocked by wagons and mules, the wagons
being sqIsrely across the cut with the point
Of the tongue buried in the north wall,
thus hemmiag the men in and making it
difficulty to extricate themselves, difficult
" under which six OF them sunk in des-
pair and death az soon az ihc walls iell.
Those who had escaped,


DAZED WITH HORROR


"a they were, threw themselves upon the
huge mUrderuus mass OF earth and woIked
witt desperate energy 10 let in light and
air their sufFocating fellows. Some Of the
men were buried mp 10 their necks hut it
was not Tor these that the dirt was filing,
il was tor


THOSE EURIED OUT OF SIGHT


with the awful silence crying out more
loudly in their behalf than their own
voice could they have been heard. A great
crowd collected at each end OF the cut and
could only be kept out Of danger by the ut
most efforts OF the police. Women and
children, and friends OF the men at work
in the cut, came running from all directions
and rushed eXciiediy through the crowd
calling out the names OF husband, or father
or brother whom they feared had been
CRUSHED BENEATH THE AWFUL WEIGHT.
They could scarcely he restrained from
breaking through the lines. IL was a sad
sight; their weeping and calls for missing
men mingled strangely with the orders OF
the foreman conducting the work OF IN
earthing the dead. The walls are ninety
feet high and almost perpendicular.
GREAT DIFFICULTY HAS BEEN ENCOUNTERED
heretofore on account of their crumbling.
There is no rock and nothing TO sustain the
walls except their own cohesion. the slope
Of the sides when they were first cut was one
foot IN ten, but it was found that they would
not stand at that angle. They have been
falling al various places slnnc the line
though fortunately never before when there
was any one hurt and it


FINALLY BECAME APPARENT
tha. it would be impossible to make them
stand at that angle. The engineers of the
road then ordered the sides to be cut down
again giving them slant OF three feet in
ten, but this seems to have been utterly in-
sufficient for such weak and crumbling
material.