Fireworks Panic at Wright Park
A lack of basic safety measures at Tacoma's Fourth of July celebration nearly leads to a deadly stampede.
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.
The people of Tacoma can thank the kind Providence which saved them from a horror at Wright Park last night worse than that which befell four years ago on the South Tacoma street car. It was due to no care on the part of Chairman J. H. Davis of the fireworks committee that hundreds of spectators were not trampled to death in the park. He made no preparations to avoid the accident which took place and which precipitated the panic. His lack of preparedness invited it. In a lame defense to The Times today, Mr. Davis attempts to shift the responsibility upon the shoulders of E. S. Squires, janitor of the Franklin school, whom Davis says he employed to take charge of the firing. Mr. Davis assumed a responsibility when he became chairman of the fireworks committee; that responsibility extended to the handling as well as the purchase of the explosives. What Mr. Davis should have done, if he was unwilling to do the firing himself, or was incompetent, was to have placed an expert pyrotechnist in charge of the display. No prudent man would ever have selected the firing ground that the fireworks committeemen selected, nor would have failed to rope off enough territory to keep the crowds back out of danger. No sane man would have placed his firing troughs for rockets and his benches for batteries in such a position that the strong wind blowing would carry the sparks right into his uncovered explosives lying upon the ground.
“Had any of the frightened thousands who rushed frantically down the hill during the panic, fallen and formed an obstruction in the pathway of those behind, a frightful mass of corpses would have been piled up on the sward.”
Public safety during large-scale civic celebrations remains a recurring point of contention in Tacoma. Much like the 1904 fireworks debacle, contemporary debates often center on whether city officials prioritize cost-cutting or ease of execution over the fundamental safety of residents.
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