West’s week of disasters claims hundreds of lives

Friday, 05 March 2010 00:00

One hundred years ago, from the newspapers of March 5, 1910.

Toronto Star.
Avalanches, landslides and floods claim hundreds of lives in the worst-ever week of natural disasters in the West, the Star reports. Monday: 36 killed, 14 seriously injured and many missing in Washington avalanches. Tuesday: 115 killed in avalanches that wrecked two trains in Washington. Wednesday: 30 killed in landslides and floods in Washington and Idaho. Friday: as many as a hundred feared killed by an avalanche that buries a crew clearing snow from a blocked CPR line near Rogers Pass, the highest crossing of the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia. Heavy snowfalls, warm Chinook winds and rain are blamed.

Later reports (including Lindsay Post March 11) put the death toll at 63, but it was expected to be weeks or even months before all the bodies could be found. There were five avalanches near Rogers Pass within four days, including “the most disastrous avalanche in the history of railroading in the mountains of British Columbia,” according to the Toronto Globe. Only one was fatal.

The rail track where the disaster came is more than a hundred feet above Bear Creek, in a narrow valley flanked by tall and steep mountains to the north and south. From Revelstoke, a train with a rotary snowplow and a large workforce came to clear the track of an avalanche that had come down from the north early Friday.

No one expected an avalanche from the south. The south mountain slope was heavily timbered with tall pines that were thought to have been there for at least 50 years. Out of the darkness at 12:30 Saturday morning it came roaring two miles down the mountain, sweeping away all the tall pines like broken matchsticks, across the rail track to Bear Creek and 700 feet up the side of the opposite mountain. Six hundred feet of a snowshed, built for protection from avalanches, was demolished. The work train was smashed. The rotary snowplow was hurled on top of the wrecked snowshed. Workers in its path were buried under 30 feet of snow, ice, rock and broken trees. Those not directly in its path escaped. A wind that came in front of the avalanche with the force of a tornado saved fireman Lecliene. He was standing on the north bank, several hundred feet above Bear Creek, and opposite the path of the avalanche. The wind, reported the Globe, “whisked him a hundred feet through the air into the bush” beyond the path of the avalanche.

A rescue train rushed 40 miles from Revelstoke, with 200 workers and every available doctor and nurse. Another train with a rescue team of 125 left from Calgary. The Revelstoke rescue train safely passed a danger point before a third blizzard buried the track. There were two more avalanches in the next two days. One, two miles from the disaster, buried the track under 60 feet of snow.

Rescue workers were hampered by a fierce blizzard, heavy snowfall, and the other avalanches that delayed the arrival of more help. But within days, there were 800 workers digging out the CPR tracks through the Selkirk Mountains.

Floured rioters
Halifax Herald.“A sensational and disgraceful riot” of Dalhousie University freemen and sophomore students erupted at the city’s Masonic hall. Forty sophomore couples gathered for a dance.” Two hours later, yelling that “rang through the building, burying the notes of music and bringing consternation to the dancers,” heralded the arrival of 20 freshmen. They were ejected, but 15 minutes later, they gained entry through a window, proceeded through the ladies’ dressing room, and appeared on the balcony, from where they showered the dancers with flour until “the ballroom floor was covered with a white coating, and the dancers presented a ghostly appearance.” They were again ejected, but not without a riot, quelled by police. One freshman, a medical student, was arrested.

Dreaded Blackhand
Montreal Star. Italian singer Enrico Caruso, the most famous tenor of his time, will not venture out of his New York hotel room without a bodyguard, after receiving two notes from the dreaded Blackhand, demanding $15,000 or his life.