Tragedy Strikes Near Coulee City
A young family loses everything, including their three children, in a devastating house fire while the parents were working in a nearby field.
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.
While their three children were burning to death in their home near Coulee City, Wash., Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Whitehead were hurrying to the scene as fast as they could run. They arrived to find the house almost burned to the ground, too late to save their little ones, who were aged 6 years, 3 years, and 16 months. The agonized husband and wife had seen the blaze while still a distance away. The fatality occurred about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. Whitehead were new settlers six miles from Coulee City and had left the children in the house while they went to dig a well half a mile away. A small fire was left burning in the cook stove and it is believed the flames communicated to the partition. As the Whiteheads lost everything, a subscription is being made up to relieve their temporary necessity.
“The mother is prostrated and the father is nearly insane over the terrible affair.”
This harrowing event illustrates the extreme vulnerability of frontier settlers, where distance from aid and the lack of basic safety infrastructure meant that a single household accident could result in total, permanent loss.
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