Tragedy at Cle Elum: Twelve Tons of Dynamite Explode
A catastrophic explosion at a mining magazine claims multiple lives, including a former Lynden pioneer.
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.
Mr. Peter Moffat was one of the victims of the terrible catastrophe that happened at Cle Elum, Washington, last Thursday. Many tons of blasting powder for the mines near Cle Elum were exploded from an unknown cause. About twelve tons of giant powder had been unloaded from a car the day before onto a platform in front of the magazine and was allowed to remain there. This had become very hot from the sun's rays during the early part of the day, and when the laborers attempted to put it into the magazine in the afternoon, it is supposed some slight jar in the handling set the powder off. Besides the giant powder, there were sixty tons of black powder in a box car and several tons in the magazine; it all went off at once. Mrs. Moffat, a Lynden pioneer who was camping nearby, was instantly killed. Miraculously, her two young daughters, Margaret and Madeline, were carried 200 feet by the force of the blast and dropped over a tree with only minor scratches.
“Large rocks and broken timbers were thrown over a mile from the scene of the disaster and the bodies of the laborers were only a handful of fragments when picked up.”
This disaster highlights the extreme danger inherent in the early industrial economy of Washington, where regulation of volatile materials was minimal. Today, Cle Elum remains shaped by its mining heritage, but the storage of industrial explosives is governed by strictly enforced federal and state safety protocols.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.