How the newspapers of the day got it right, and how they got it wrong.
Wellington Scrapbook
Click on The Index for a list of the newspapers that covered the story.
The problem is , Steve , who got it right ?
The number of locos varies between 4 and 7 . the number of dead from 35 to “hundreds” .
Pretty damned awful .
So the media have not learned much then ?
Mike Brit
As was typical of the Yellow Journalism of the day, I don’t think that any of them got it right, though I think that the Wenatchee Daily World and the Seattle papers came the closest.
For an accurate account, as well as a good read, try Vis Major, by Martin Burwash, a local historian/foamer. I’ve read it twice.
I got home yesterday from a cruise, and on the ship I read the book, “THE WHITE CASCADE” by Gary Krist. A really great read for train fans. It gives a detailed story of all that lead up to the disaster and all that went on during the 3 storms that caused the avalanche.
GN had 4 rotaries working 24/7 to get the trains off the mountain, and they could not keep up with the slides.
A better read if you can find a copy of it is “Northwest Disaster: Avalanche & Fire” by Ruby El Hult. She interviewed first hand accounts years after the Wellington disaster, but some of the “facts” are quite murky. I’ve got a bunch of primary documents about the wreck, as this topic was my one of my undergraduate projects. Before Gary Kirst’s book came out not too many people outside of the Pacific Northwest knew about it. I would call Martin Burwash one of the leading experts on the avalanche.
Somewhere, I have a small collection of articles written be Eva Braun, a reporter for the Wenatchee Daily World. Included in the collection are her original articles written at the time of the avalanche. They make for interesting reading.