Deadly Wellington Avalanche of 1910

Deadly Wellington Avalanche of 1910

Avalanches can be deadly and vary. You hardly hear of them like you do tornadoes or thunderstorms. They happen in places snow builds up. In 1910, Wellington Washington was hit with a large avalanche killing 96 people. It all starts towards the end of February and really does damage the first of March leaving bodies still to be found months later. Following, lists details, lessons learned, causes and aftermaths.

Avalanches are heavy snowfalls on steep slopes that yield to the pull of gravity and fail (Abbot, 2012, p. 424). Avalanche volumes vary from small to very large- their travel distance varies from only a few meters to several kilometers (Abbot, 2012, p. 424). Why snow builds into thick masses on steep slopes depends on the internal structure of the snow. The snowflakes are crystals of ice with air in their pore spaces and because these snow masses are warmer than the surrounding air, the snowflakes transform and build up. This just allows the snow to melt and refreeze causing greater thickness of the snow.

According to the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society, the Wellington avalanche, February, 1910,was the worst avalanche, measured in terms of lives lost, in the history of the United States. Bodies were torn to pieces by tremendous force and there was blood stained snow on a cold February night in Wellington, Washington. Jackson Holtz, author of Stevens Pass train disaster of 1910: History's valuable lesson, explains some horrible detail of this tragic night. Holtz (2010) says, "The carnage was so horrendous that people of the day renamed the town Tye (para. 5)." They thought where they had those trains parked was safe because they never had seen a slide come down there (Holtz, 2010, Stevens Pass Train Disaster, para. 27).

In February 1910, Wellington, Washington was hit with a terrible blizzard. Wellington was a Great Northern Railway stop high in the Cascades, on the west side of the old Cascade Tunnel, under Stevens Pass. According to the History Channel website, on February 26, a blizzard in Washington caused high snow drifts in the Cascade Mountains that blocked the rail lines (Trains Buried by Avalanche, 2012). A foot of snow fell every hour. On the worst day, 11 feet of snow fell. A passenger and a mail train bound from Spokane to Seattle ended up trapped in this blizzard. The growing snow accumulations and repeated avalanches were of such penetration no snow plows could possibly hammer them free.

When all seemed to slow down just a bit while everyone became calm, on February 28th, the snowfall was replaced by rain and a warm wind. Their worst nightmare took place then. On March 1, 1910 just after 1 am, a slab of snow broke loose from the side of Windy Mountain as a result of a lightning strike during a thunderstorm. A ten foot high, half a mile long, and a quarter of a mile wide mass of snow fell. It fell toward the town. It hit the railroad depot directly while most of the passengers and crew were asleep. The impact threw the trains 150 feet downhill and into the Tye River valley.

William Edward Flannery, Great Northern Railroad telegraph operator recalls, "At 12:05 I woke up and saw a flash of lightning zigzag across the sky, and saw another, and then there was a loud clap of thunder. The next thing I knew I heard somebody yelling. We got up and climbed down on the bank to where the trains had been knocked by the slide...I saw a man lying on the snow and I went and got him and put him on my back...and while I started up the hill, another slide hit and knocked me down underneath it, and I lost this man, I was sort of dazed and was underneath the snow some ten or 15 feet. I started to dig and climb out along the side of a tree, and finally got out, and I was in such a dazed condition that I walked down and walked into the river up to my shoulders, when I came to and realized what I had done (Mapes, Lynda, 2010, Stevens Pass Avalanche, para. 18)."

Lynda V. Mapes, author of 1910 Stevens Pass Avalanche Still Deadliest in U.S. History, says, "