The Tragedy Beneath Lake Union
A routine sewer tunneling project turns into a deadly nightmare, leaving one laborer lost beneath six feet of quicksand as his comrades narrowly escape.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Three men working in the Lake Union sewer tunnel last night struck a spring, which flooded the tunnel with sand and water. One of the men, Daniel McLean, was smothered, and the other two barely escaped with their lives. At 6 o'clock last evening the night shift, composed of Daniel McLean, Peter Faber, and Thomas Nelligan, were lowered down the seventy-foot shaft to the tunnel, 1,200 feet from the shaft. The lead was cut in a semi-circle around a piece of bad land. Suddenly, a great flush of sand and water burst in, flooding the lead to a depth of six feet. McLean shouted, 'Run, boys, run!' Faber was the first out, followed by Nelligan. Nelligan was found by a relief party in an exhausted condition, covered with bruises. He reported that during their flight, he passed over something in the water that felt like a rubber coat—likely his companion, McLean. Despite the relief force's efforts to clear the sand, McLean’s body remained unrecovered by morning. McLean, 40, left behind a wife and three children living on West Street, who were kept in the dark about the tragedy for the duration of the night because his coworkers could not bring themselves to break the news.
“Oh, I can't tell the poor woman about it. It will take a far braver man than me to break the news.”
This 1892 disaster reflects the inherent, often fatal, volatility of Seattle's early infrastructure development. As the city continues to grapple with massive underground projects and complex civil engineering challenges, the human cost of these high-risk labor environments remains a resonant, albeit grim, part of our urban history.
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