Slaughter-house Fire Ends in Horror
A blaze at a waterfront facility leaves animals dead and the community shaken.
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.
Carstens Bros.' slaughter-house on the Grant street bridge, at the Palouse mill building, was burned to the ground yesterday afternoon and twenty hogs, one steer and a horse were killed. The origin of the fire is unknown. The loss to buildings, fixtures and stock will be about $3,000. It is less than three months ago that Carstens Bros.' slaughter-house in South Seattle was totally destroyed by fire. Shortly after 12 o'clock, a section hand discovered flames leaping from the roof. The alarm was sent to fire headquarters, but the slaughter-house was soon enveloped in flames. Mingled with the fierce crackling came the piercing squeals of burning hogs, the bellowing of a steer and the shrieking of a horse. Several section men, out of pity, rushed to the burning building and opened the pen where the pigs were imprisoned. Eight or ten animals dashed out and plunged into the salt water of the bay; others did not escape. Several pigs that reached shore had pieces of cooked flesh dropping from their sides and had to be euthanized.
“Mingled with fierce crackling of the flames, came the piercing squeals of twenty head of burning hogs, the bellowing of a steer and the shrieking of a horse.”
This industrial tragedy occurred on the tide flats of the Duwamish, a landscape that was subsequently filled in and radically altered. The scene highlights the brutal proximity of slaughterhouse operations to residential and transit zones in 1890s Seattle, a conflict that shifted as the city formalized its zoning and industrialized its meatpacking infrastructure.
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