Train Crash at Crush, Texas by Cox Mike;

Author:Cox, Mike;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

PICKING UP THE PIECES

As soon as the deadly shrapnel fall ended, reporters climbed down from the observation deck and sprinted to one or the other of the two on-site telegraph shacks to wire their respective editors that the Katy crash had not gone as planned. Details would follow as they became available.

Katy personnel and doctors on the scene got the more seriously wounded on the first train to Waco. From the MKT Depot there, the victims were rushed by horse-drawn conveyance to Waco’s largest and finest accommodation, the Pacific Hotel, for treatment by local physicians, including MKT contract surgeon Dr. Garland B. Foscue. Hospitals were not common then, and Waco did not yet have one. The less seriously injured were left to fend for themselves or to be helped by friends or family.

How the unexpected boiler explosions affected the man who had planned the spectacle can only be surmised, but Crush had no time for reflection. He had left on the first train to arrange for the care of the injured spectators. “Mr. Crush is now in Waco, giving his personal attention to the matter, and will remain there as long as his services are necessary,” his chief clerk, Randolph Daniels, told a reporter the next day.

Crush’s rapid departure may have been inspired by more than his concern for the injured spectators. Crash witness A.K. Ragsdale, who would go on to a long career with the Cotton Belt Railroad, remembered years later that once the stunned spectators began to realize that the collision had resulted in deaths and injuries, sentiment arose to lynch Crush. None of the contemporary newspaper accounts of the crash and its aftermath mentions talk of a proposed necktie party for the Katy’s general passenger agent, but extrajudicial hangings were certainly not unknown in Texas back then.

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