Topic: Calamities
The 2014 Carlton Complex fire, the largest single wildfire in Washington history, burned 256,108 acres, destroyed 353 homes, and caused an estimated $98 million in damage. The fire caused no direct fa...
In this People's History, Dorothea (Pfister) Nordstrand (1916-2011) recalls the time her father, riding from the Green Lake neighborhood to downtown Seattle to look for work on January 5, 1920, was in...
Mount St. Helens once was the fifth-highest mountain in Washington. Now, because of a huge eruption on May 18, 1980, it is only the 30th highest peak in the state. There were many signs that the mount...
Early buildings in what is now the state of Washington were mostly constructed of wood. There were no organized fire departments and not much water that could be used in the event of fire. Seattle's d...
Michael Atkins relays the story of William Hamilton, an Irishman who came to Seattle in 1909. One of Hamilton's grand nieces in Ireland posted a query on a usenet group on the internet. Intrigued, Atk...
The misnamed "Spanish Flu" pandemic peaked in late 1918 and remains the most widespread and lethal outbreak of disease to afflict humankind worldwide in recorded history. (Note: In September 2021 it w...
This People's History consists of contemporary newspaper accounts of the Franklin Mine Disaster of August 24,1894, and portions of the investigative report by the official state mines inspector. With ...
The stretch of coast between Tillamook Bay in Oregon and Vancouver Island, encompassing the mouth of the Columbia River and the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, has claimed since 1800 more than...
Most of downtown Spokane (then known as Spokane Falls) was destroyed by fire on August 4, 1889. The conflagration broke out in an area of flimsy wooden structures and quickly spread to engulf the subs...
In 1999, 90-year old John Parker of Port Ludlow penned this account of the 1921 explosion of the Hitt's Fireworks factory in the Rainier Valley. One woman working at the plant was killed.
Sixteen men, all foreign-born, were killed on November 6, 1910, in an explosion at the Lawson Coal Mine in Black Diamond in east King County. The following is excerpted from the "State Inspector of Co...
Despite persistent rain in the Pacific Northwest, fire has figured prominently in the history of the region. Fire was once a natural part of the environment, and Indigenous people used it in their que...