The Wellington Avalanche Tragedy

Forty-eight bodies have been recovered from the wreckage brought down by the recent avalanche in Wellington, and of this number 41 have been identified. The searchers are working in the daytime only. The Great Northern Railroad has sent in 15 Alaskan sleds, on which the bodies will be taken to a train at Skykomish, to be carried to Everett and Seattle. All the wounded in the temporary hospitals here are recovering. Of 700 sacks of mail carried away by the avalanche, only 150 have been recovered. There is no trace whatever of one mail car and seven clerks and weighers. In some places cars are known to be under 70 feet of trees, snow, earth and rocks. The Great Northern is using all the resources at its command to open the track. Superintendent O'Neill estimates the actual loss to the road by destruction of property at $1,000,000. The recovery of bodies will be slow until the locomotives arrive to pull away the giant trees, whose trunks and branches are above the dead. The snow is already packed so tight that a shovel will hit it like ice.