Tragedy at the Renton Coal Mine
A young miner is killed instantly by a falling boulder while working deep inside a Renton coal drift.
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.
Vink Zonoto, a Renton coal miner, was crushed to death by a heavy boulder at the coal mines there last night. He was dead when found by several other miners. Zonoto was working at the face of a drift in the mine when last seen alive. When the body was found it was under a giant boulder weighing about a ton. The rock had fallen from the roof of the drift, and death must have resulted instantly to the victim. Nearly every bone in the man's body was broken. Zonoto was Italian and about 23 years of age.
“When the body was found it was under a giant boulder weighing about a ton.”
This reflects the extreme hazards inherent in Washington's coal industry at the turn of the century, where worker safety was often sacrificed for extraction speed. It serves as a reminder of the human cost that fueled the region's early industrial boom.
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