The Tragedy Beneath the City
After a ten-hour search, the body of a sewer worker is recovered from a tunnel near Lake Union, marking a deadly hazard in the city's rapid expansion.
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.
The body of Daniel McLean, who was buried in the Lake Union sewer tunnel Saturday night by a rush of quicksand forced out by the opening of a spring, was found at 10 o'clock yesterday morning. The relief corps had been searching for him over ten hours. Deputy James A. Greene descended the main shaft to the point where the side tunnel had been dug at right angles. The body lay in the exact location where Peter Faber said he heard the gurgling sound from McLean's throat. McLean was a finely built man, about 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 200 pounds. He leaves a wife and three children residing at Box and Thomas streets. Coroner Horton decided that an inquest was unnecessary, as the accident was due to causes beyond human control. The damage to the tunnel, where 200 cartloads of quicksand were forced in by the spring, is considered trifling.
“The day upon which you turn off the day laborers now at work upon the streets and sewers of our city, you sound her death knell.”
In 1892, Seattle’s breakneck pace of infrastructure development claimed lives in the city's burgeoning sewer tunnels. Today, Seattle continues to grapple with the human and environmental costs of massive, high-stakes infrastructure projects beneath the city's surface.
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