Tragedy in the Spokane Excavations
A laborer is killed and his foreman injured after a delayed dynamite blast detonates during construction work on First Avenue.
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 terrific and totally unexpected explosion of a blast yesterday on First avenue, near the Pacific hotel, hurled one man into eternity and seriously injured another, besides stampeding the people who were in that immediate vicinity. The man killed was William Brown, a laborer, who had been working in the excavations for the new Jones & Dillingham building on First avenue. Two blasts had been set off at 11:30 o'clock and the workmen had sought places of safety. There was a loud report, and after waiting a minute or two for the second, which did not come, the men started back to work. Just as Foreman John Clark and laborer William Brown reached the edge of the lot the second explosion occurred, and a rock about the size of a man's fist struck Brown full in the chest with tremendous force. He died instantly and his body was removed to a place of safety by his comrades. Clark managed to escape with his life, but was badly cut up by the flying bits of rock. His head and right leg are in a bad condition as the result of the accident.
“A rock about the size of a man's fist struck Brown full in the chest with tremendous force.”
Early Spokane construction was notoriously dangerous, often relying on high explosives in dense, growing downtown corridors. Today’s industrial safety regulations stand as a direct legislative legacy of these frequent 19th-century workplace disasters.
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