Local
tragedies make headlines
By Deneen Gilmour
The Forum - 12/19/1999
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A Moorhead fireman hoses the wreckage of a Norwest Airlines passenger plane that crashed October 30, 1941. The plane went down just north of the Moorhead city limits where the American Crystal sugar beet plant stands today. The pilot was the only survivor. Courtesy of Clay County Historical Society |
Examples include a 1941 Northwest airplane crash in Moorhead, a deadly train wreck near Michigan, N.D., in 1945 and the flood and fire two years ago in Grand Forks.
Amazingly, nobody was killed or seriously injured in Grand Forks despite the disaster which forced 47,000 people to evacuate and caused an estimated $2 billion in damage.
Moorhead plane crash
“Fourteen killed in fiery crash of Northwest airliner here,” blared a huge headline in a Forum “extra” edition Oct. 30, 1941.
“Pilot hurled free as plane smashes into field near Moorhead,” said a secondary headline.
Fargo and Moorhead residents who rushed to the crash site found pilot Clarence Bates, the only survivor, wandering 250 feet from the debris.
Two Fargo men were among the dead.
The plane smacked into the earth north of Moorhead on what is now the American Crystal Sugar plant site.
The flight originated in Minneapolis and was to land in Fargo. The pilot, in a deposition given from his bed at St. John’s Hospital, said he first noticed ice – but not an alarming amount – on the plane’s wings while flying over Barnesville.
As he descended to 600 feet, he detected trouble. Ice had piled up on the wings and the plane responded slowly to controls.
“Then everything just went haywire,” he said. “I couldn’t control at all. Nothing worked, nothing answered. I might just as well not have been there as far as the way the thing acted for the next few seconds, and it wasn’t very long, it was hardly enough time for me to realize I was going to crash.
“About this time we must have settled because I started to see lights, saw all the lights on the horizon and I knew we were in a level position from the instruments, and from the fact that the lights were all on the horizon. It was just a few seconds after that that we crashed.”
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On December 28, 1930, the old Dakota Territory Capitol, which also served as North Dakota's Capitol in Bismark, was destroyed by fire. Gov. George F. Shafer broke ground for a new $2 million state Capitol August 13, 1932. Forum File Photo |
More than 750 pounds of mail went down with the plane. Salvage crews retrieved 100 pounds of it – 898 pieces – either charred or partially burned. Parcels with legible addresses were forwarded. The rest went to the post office’s dead letter office in Washington.
Deadly train wreck
Thirty-four people died Aug. 9, 1945, in North Dakota’s worst railroad disaster.
The train wreck occurred when the second section of Great Northern’s Empire Builder plowed into a stalled observation car 50 miles west of Grand Forks.
Many of the dead were servicemen who were passengers in the observation car. The force of the crash mangled the observation car and pushed its wreckage six feet in the air, trapping people inside.
Workers, using acetylene torches, labored six hours to bore through steel and rescue a woman they could see alive inside the wreckage.
Doctors and nurses from Lakota, Devils Lake, Sharon, Larimore and Grand Forks rushed to the scene.
About 500 people, including passengers who weren’t seriously hurt, gathered at the scene to help rescue workers.
Fire destroys Capitol
Fire burned all but the frame of the North Dakota Capitol on Dec. 28, 1930.
It was surmised that oily rags in a janitors’ closet caused the fire to ignite. The rags had been used to clean and varnish legislators’ desks in preparation for the Jan. 6 start of the legislative session.
Secretary of State Robert Byrne saved the original copy of the state constitution but suffered cuts and burns on his hands while breaking a window to reach the document.
Another state employee, Jennie Ulsrud, burned her hands as she tried to save records in the state treasurer’s office.
Gov. George F. Shafer came back from a trip to St. Paul while the fire was burning. He immediately convened a team of state leaders to discuss emergency steps for coping with the loss of state records and work space.
The day after the fire, 40 state prison inmates went to work alongside state leaders, trying to salvage materials from the ruins.
The fire broke out on the top floor of the four-story Capitol and ate its way downward, devouring records dating back to the days of Dakota Territory. The building was erected in 1883 as the seat of government for Dakota Territory.
The Legislature ended up meeting in Bismarck’s war memorial building and city auditorium.
Construction on a new Capitol began in 1932 and was completed in 1934 for $2 million.
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Three people died December 13, 1951, when fired destroyed the Earle Hotel and adjacent Waldorf Tavern at Main Avenue and 7th Street in Fargo. Forum File Photo |
- An explosion and fire killed three people and destroyed four city blocks in Minot on July 21, 1947. The initial explosion occurred at Westland Oil Co. and knocked people to the ground two blocks away. Ultimately, the fire destroyed nine businesses. Smoke was visible 100 miles away.
- Fire destroyed the historic Earle Hotel and adjacent Waldorf Tavern at Main Avenue and Seventh Street in downtown Fargo on Dec. 13, 1951. Three people died.
- A fire Nov. 29, 1958, destroyed the R.E. Gunkelman & Sons seed processing plant and elevator in downtown Fargo. More than 60 firefighters fought the blaze in below-freezing temperatures to keep it from spreading to other buildings near Broadway and Main Avenue.
- A fire April 19, 1966, destroyed Fargo’s Central High School, just west of the Cass County Courthouse. The loss was estimated at $1 million.
Students finished the school year at Fargo North High School and other sites around town. Shortly after the fire, construction began on Fargo South High School.
- The historic Gladstone Hotel and seven other Jamestown, N.D., businesses were lost to fire March 27, 1968. Firefighters helped 11 hotel guests escape. Nobody was hurt.
- Six people died June 8, 1977, when fire consumed the Colonial Hotel in downtown Devils Lake, N.D. Firefighters and police officers helped the rest of the hotel’s 24 residents escape the burning building.
- In terms of fatalities, North Dakota’s worst fire was in Devils Lake in October 1994. Nine members of the Richard Charboneau and Carol Peltier Charboneau family died when their home burned.
- A Moorhead mother, Terriann Carrillo, and her six children died of smoke inhalation Jan. 14, 1995. The fire was ignited by a burning cigarette in their apartment on South 19th Street.
