Tragedy at the Western Mill
A 17-year-old worker is crushed by a falling log while loading a rail car in Tacoma.
John C. Warnick, aged 17, residing with his parents at 913 South Eighth street, was fearfully crushed by a log near Glendale. It is feared he will die. Young Warnick is employed at Glenczer Bros.' Western mill, near the end of the Sixth avenue car line in Tacoma, his father being a timber locator in the employ of the same company. The mill has a steam logging road that runs back into the woods quite a distance, and it was while loading logs onto the cars that the accident occurred which may cost young Warnick his life. He was assisting in loading an extra heavy log onto one of the cars, and had occasion to mount the log for the adjustment of a chain, when the chain broke and the log, rolling down the skids, threw him to the earth, rolled upon him, crushing him beneath it and pinning him to the earth, fracturing his skull.
“He was assisting in loading an extra heavy log onto one of the cars, and had occasion to mount the log for the adjustment of a chain, when the chain broke.”
Industrial accidents in the timber industry were a grim, daily reality of life in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century. While modern safety regulations have drastically reduced such fatalities, the physical danger inherent in the region's primary resource extraction remains a part of the local labor history.
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