Miners Trapped in Newcastle Cave-In
Two workers survived a terrifying collapse in the Coal Creek mine after being pinned under four feet of rock and coal for ninety minutes.
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.
Frank P. Carmichael and a comrade named Crowder were buried alive under many tons of coal and rock in the Coal Creek mine of the Oregon Improvement Company, near Newcastle, on Friday morning and were only rescued after an hour and a half of hard work by other miners. They came out badly bruised and cut, but had no bones broken. Carmichael and Crowder were cutting out a pillar between two breasts extending about 300 feet up the vein, which pitches at an angle of about forty-five degrees, when they heard the roof further up cave in, crushing the pillar beneath it. They began to slide down to the gangway in hopes of escaping, but the mass of rock and coal poured down after them and buried them to a depth of four feet. A man working in the next breast heard the fall and, knowing they were working there, summoned assistance and went to work rescuing them. After an hour and a half they were reached, Carmichael being doubled up by a great rock pressing on his back and Crowder lying with his throat across the calf of Carmichael's leg so that he was hardly able to breathe and was almost at the last gasp. The rock which held Carmichael had to be broken with sledges before it could be moved, and his back was very badly bruised and his face and body were bruised and cut all over. Crowder's forehead was cut clear across by the sharp edge of a rock and had to be sewn up.
“Crowder lying with his throat across the calf of Carmichael's leg so that he was hardly able to breathe and was almost at the last gasp.”
Mining accidents were a grim, common occurrence in the late 19th century as Seattle's early economy relied on coal extraction from Newcastle and Renton. Today, the mines are long closed, and the area has been transformed into suburban residential neighborhoods and parks, though the legacy of the region's industrial extraction remains etched into the local landscape.
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