Fatal Accident at McDonald’s Logging Camp
A swamp hook recoils, claiming the life of a Swedish laborer in the woods near Orting.
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 peculiar incident caused the death of Frank Coslick, a Swede, at Camp No. 1, known as McDonald's logging camp, on the Northern Pacific railroad, several miles from Orting. Just before noon, Coslick and other men of the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber company were rolling logs down to the cars for shipment to Tacoma. In loading, swamp hooks were used, together with chains. While moving a log, the chain binding it suddenly snapped from the donkey engine and the swamp hook was jerked out of the log and struck Coslick, one prong going into the right shoulder and the other entering the head back of the ear. After falling backward from the log, he never regained consciousness. His comrades improvised a stretcher and took him to the nearest railroad crossing and he was taken to Orting on a train. Superintendent Wilbur brought him to Tacoma, but he died on the train, and Undertaker Hoska took charge of the remains.
“After falling backward from the log, he never regained consciousness.”
Logging remained one of the most perilous professions in Washington for decades, with specialized tools like swamp hooks often causing unpredictable and fatal accidents. Today, while safety standards have revolutionized the industry, the high physical risk to those working in the state's forests remains a point of resonance for labor advocates.
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