A Fiery Catastrophe at the Tacoma Mill
A newly installed furnace at the Tacoma Mill overheated with such intensity that its massive iron stack melted and collapsed, narrowly missing the workers nearby.
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.
Hanson & Co. recently started the fire in their new furnace for burning refuse matter at their mill, and yesterday the heat became so intense that the base of the stack, which stood about thirty feet high and six feet in diameter, being made of boiler iron, heavily banded, melted so much that it fell to the ground with a crash, doing considerable damage to the structure, but luckily, nobody was hurt. The base of the stack being made of the heavy iron, as aforesaid, and melting under the intense heat of the flames, fell with a tremendous crash. It struck the ground alongside of the immense furnace, near the blacksmith shop, and narrowly missing it. Several men were in the shop, and it is almost miraculous that no one was hurt. It is seriously doubted whether or not the furnace will do the work for which it was intended, as the fire brick, which line the inside of the structure, have, in several places, been melted. The use of the furnace, however, has not been abandoned, and it may be that sundry improvements will make it answer the original purpose.
“The base of the stack... melting under the intense heat of the flames, fell with a tremendous crash.”
This incident captures the perilous nature of 19th-century industrial innovation, where local boosters rushed to implement new technology with little regard for engineering safety. Today, the site of the Tacoma Mill is long gone, reflecting the broader shift from heavy timber manufacturing to the modern service-based economy of the Puget Sound.
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