A Miraculous Survival Amid the Ruins
While clearing debris after the Great Seattle Fire, a worker narrowly avoids being crushed when a wagon overturns on the precarious streets of the charred city.
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 very nearly fatal accident occurred at 9 o'clock yesterday morning. Mr. J. P. Hitson, employed by Jordan Bros., engaged a Second Street drayman to haul his trunk from the Railroad Avenue wharf to Yester Avenue. Both Mr. Hitson and the drayman got upon the wagon and the team started for the wharf. In going down the incline on Main Street below Front Street, the driver turned suddenly to avoid a passing team, and in so doing overturned his wagon. Mr. Hitson fell under the load and the wagon bed rolled over on top of him. A crowd rushed up and the wagon bed was lifted off the prostrate man, and it was found that he was not seriously injured, though how he escaped is almost miraculous, for had anything but the full weight of the wagon bed struck him it would have crushed him. The driver and horses escaped uninjured.
“A crowd rushed up and the wagon bed was lifted off the prostrate man, and it was found that he was not seriously injured, though how he escaped is almost miraculous.”
This account from June 1889 captures the chaotic, perilous atmosphere of Seattle immediately following the Great Fire. It serves as a stark reminder that even as the city scrambled to rebuild, the very geography of the town—slopes and wharves—presented daily, life-threatening hazards to laborers navigating the ruins.
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