Loggers' Narrow Escape
A dangerous workplace accident on Bainbridge Island leaves a logger hospitalized in Seattle.
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.
Yesterday morning, John Wood, a chopper in Mike Taylor's camp on Bainbridge Island, cut an immense tree and stepped down on the end of a log to see the monarch of the forest fall. As it came down, the tree struck the opposite end of the log on which Wood was standing, and so great was the shock that it pitched him 20 feet into the air. He came down head first and struck in a clump of limbs and brush. His collarbone was broken, and his head, face, and shoulders were terribly lacerated. He was at once placed in a boat and brought to Seattle for medical and surgical attendance. The Sisters now have charge of him and will do their best to pull him through.
“So great was the shock that it pitched him 20 feet into the air.”
Logging has always been one of the Pacific Northwest’s most hazardous trades. This account captures the precarious nature of early timber extraction, where a simple miscalculation could result in a life-threatening, gravity-defying injury.
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