Page 17 - Pierce County Lawyer - July August 2024

Great Northern employees, Wellington residents and later others undertook heroic efforts to find survivors and to recover the dead. Ultimately 23 survivors were rescued. The last was Ida Starrett, a widow traveling with her three young children. More than a day after the avalanche, her cries from beneath the snow were heard, and she was then dug out. But her infant son, just beneath her, had died in her arms. Her daughter was also killed, but her seven year old son, Raymond, survived, although with a 30-inch wooden sliver impaling his forehead. (It was successfully removed with the aid of a straight razor, and Raymond suffered no lasting physical damage other than a scar.)
that the disaster was the result of an avalanche “the cause of which was beyond human control”, but was critical of a number of decisions made by Great Northern before the slide.
Criticism of Great Northern and dissatisfaction with its policy of denying almost all claims for damages led to a number
of lawsuits. Some were settled by Great Northern with no admission of liability, some were dismissed, and the first to
trial was Topping v Great Northern Railway Co. (King County Superior Court NO 94,511) in October of 1913, Judge John Humphries presiding. William Topping, the father of deceased passenger Ned Topping, brought the suit as guardian ad litem for his 7 year old grandson Bill. A number of theories regarding negligent acts by the railway were presented, but author Gary Krist, who has read the trial transcript, thinks the plaintiff ’s case was weak. At the close of the plaintiff ’s case, Great Northern made a motion to dismiss and Judge Humphries indicated
he was inclined to grant it, but denied the motion because of public pressure against Great Northern. The jury was more sympathetic to the plaintiff and awarded $20,000 in damages for the wrongful death of Ned Topping. (Today’s equivalent purchasing power would be approximately $660,000.)
Ultimately, 96 bodies were recovered, the last not until the following July. The dead included 35 train passengers, 58 railroad employees on the trains, and three employees who
had been sleeping in cabins demolished by the avalanche. There is speculation that there were more deaths because of
the poorly kept records of the Great Northern employees who were hired to dig out the snow. Many of the victims’ bodies were dismembered, or so badly mutilated that identification was difficult and, in some cases, inaccurate. Some rescuers were traumatized by what they had seen, with body parts scattered in the red snow. The Wellington Avalanche remains the most deadly in US history (an avalanche in Alaska in 1898 caused
65 deaths). That same storm system was also responsible for Canada’s worst avalanche a few days later, causing 62 deaths. (The Oso Landslide of March 22, 2014, claimed 49 lives.)
Initial public reaction was horror at the extent of the tragedy at Wellington and praise for the efforts of Great Northern and its employees. However, this changed after more details emerged and surviving passengers complained. Passenger Edward
Boles stated that the trains at Wellington were placed in “what proved to be the most dangerous position possible to find.” On March 5th, Seattle’s Argus newspaper criticized Great Northern for not supplying adequate snow sheds below Wellington to protect trains and tracks from storms. Relatives of the deceased complained that the railroad spent more time and money on re- opening the route than they did recovering the remains of the dead. A King County coroner’s inquest jury of six men found
Rightly fearing the precedent the Topping case could establish, Great Northern appealed the verdict and judgment to the Washington Supreme Court, which issued its decision in August of 1914. (Topping v Great Northern R. Co. 81 Wash 166, 142 PAC.425). Justice Wallace Mount, with no dissenter in the four judge panel, clarified the facts and issues and held, “This avalanche was what is known in law as vis major, or an act of God . . .”, thus finding no liability against Great Northern. The White Cascades author, Gary Krist, agrees (the author of this article expresses no opinion).
Fallout from the decision included complaints that railroad companies controlled the courts, (railroads bribing Legislators being a fairly common practice during the ‘Robber Baron’ era.) The association of Wellington with this disaster led the small town to change its name to Tye, for the river into whose ravine the trains were swept.
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July/August 2024 | PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER 17