The Slaughterhouse Inferno
A mysterious fire at a Seattle-area slaughterhouse leads to a harrowing escape as a man risks his life to release trapped livestock amidst a blaze that threatened the neighboring Union Stockyards.
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.
A fire of unknown origin occurred early Tuesday morning at the Carstens & Co. slaughterhouse, located several miles from the city, resulting in a loss of over $1,500. A large amount of meat perished in the flames. The stockyards were located across the railroad tracks, adjacent to the Union Stockyards, which had a narrow escape from destruction. It is not known how the fire started. Julius Carstens, a brother of Thomas Carstens, was sleeping in a small room in the building. At 1:30 a.m., he was awakened by cries of fire and, running out, saw flames pouring out of the roof of the slaughterhouse. The building was on fire all over in less than four minutes, and no water being at hand, there was nothing to do but let the flames have their way. In a pen nearby, three horses were turned loose. The frightened animals ran down the county road and were heard to crash through the brush at an abrupt turn of the thoroughfare. A fourth horse is missing, and Julius Carstens thinks it was burned and died while trying to hide in the interior. In a corral on the opposite side of the burning slaughterhouse were sixty sheep, and in turning them out, Carstens was surrounded by flames and narrowly escaped being burned to death. As soon as he opened the big gate, the sheep dashed out into the adjacent timber and were immediately lost to sight. While he was driving the sheep out, the gate caught fire and the corral on all sides was ablaze. He was surrounded by fire, and each second the heat became more intense and almost unbearable. In desperation, he sprang to the gate, burst it open, and ran out. In a smaller corral near by were six live beeves; five got out safely and are now running wild in the timber, but the sixth was burned to death. At the time of the fire, there were in the slaughterhouse three dressed beeves, three dressed hogs, eight dressed sheep, and thirty-three dressed calves, all of which were destroyed. In a small building that was also burned were ten tons of potatoes. No fire was left in the slaughterhouse at night, and how the place could have caught is regarded by young Carstens as a mystery.
“He was surrounded by fire, and each second the heat became more intense and almost unbearable. In desperation, he sprang to the gate, burst it open, and ran out.”
Carstens & Co. became a massive fixture in the region's meatpacking industry for decades. This 1892 disaster reminds us that while the Union Stockyards and the surrounding meatpacking district in industrial Seattle have long been redeveloped, the city's growth was literally built upon these sprawling, fire-prone, and hazardous industrial hubs.
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