Wellington, Washington avalanche

When railway accident of Wellington 96 people died in an avalanche in two trains in Wellington Station (Washington) in the Cascade Mountains.

Requirements

Wellington was a small railway settlement on the west side of the Cascade Tunnel, high in the Cascade Range. In the summer of 1909 there had been a forest fire above the village, so that the slope was almost bald.

End of February 1910 it snowed in Wellington during a blizzard nine days continuously up to 30 cm per hour. The day with the highest rainfall 3.4 m snow fell. Under these circumstances, the track was no longer keep up with snow plowing -free and two trains of the Great Northern Railway, both from Spokane to Seattle on the road, a mail train and a passenger train, the end of the storm in the Wellington train station had to wait. Passengers and staff stayed mainly in the cars of the trains.

Circumstances of the accident

On the evening of 28 February, the temperature rose abruptly, and the precipitate was transferred to rain and a thunderstorm broke loose. About 1 clock in the morning on March 1, broke a slab above the village from about 800 feet to 400 feet tall, slipped on the railway lines to crack and parked in the station trains in the 50 meter deep flowing Tye River.

Follow

35 passengers and 58 employees of the railway came in the trains killed three other railway workers at the station. 23 travelers were rescued alive from the rubble. Then had to be discontinued because of the re- breaking in wintry weather, the rescue work. It was not until the end of July, 21 weeks after the accident, the last bodies were recovered.

Because of the accident Wellington was renamed in October 1910 in Tye, in order to kill reminiscent of the old name of accidents. At the same time the Great Northern Railway the slopes above the path began to back with avalanche. 1929, the railway facilities were abandoned in Wellington / Tye, as a deeper, second Cascade Tunnel was put into operation.

Worth knowing

A few days later, on March 4, 1910, another avalanche accident in which 62 railway workers were killed occurred further north in Canada.