Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1910 — TRAINS BURIED BY SNOWSLIDE [ARTICLE]

TRAINS BURIED BY SNOWSLIDE

Cars Fall 150 Feet and 50 Persons Are Killed. RESCUERS RECOVER 23 BODIES • \ Fifteen or Twenty Persons Were In < Jured and Twenty-Five Are Missing—Great Havoc In the Northwest. Fifty lives were lost in the avalanche that carried two Great Northern trains into a canyon near Wellington, Wash. The cars fell 150 feet and were buried by debris. The town of Wellington and the Great Northern powet house were not destroyed. Most of the dead are believed to have been passengers on the westbound Great Northern express bound from Spokane to Seattle, which has been stalled in the mountains since last Thursday. They were asleep when the slide came. The other train was the transcontinental fast mail, which carried no passengers. Twenty three bodies have been recovered, fifteen or twenty are injured, and twenty-five are missing. The two trains were under the charge ol Conductors Parzybook and Pettit, both of Everett. The private car of Superintendent O’Neill of the western division of the Great Northern was attached to ths express and burled with the rest of the train. It Is feared A E. Longcoy, private secretary to Superintendent O’Neill, Is among the dead. O’Neill, who has been directing the fight against the snow blockade for the last ten days, .was not in the car at the time and escaped injury? Conditions almost unprecedented have virtually cut off the entire northwest, and have tied up traffic on half a dozen transcontinental railroads. Thaws in the mountains have caused avalanches and snow slides that have swept away mountain towns and sections of railroad tracks from Nevada to British Columbia. Floods also have caused widespread damage. The exact number of deaths caused by avalanches in the Rockies, In Idaho, and in western Montana probably will not be known until the summer sun melts the great masses of snow and ice in the canon into which several mining towns were swept