Triangle+Shirtwaist+Company

TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST COMPANY FIRE //** By Ryan In 1911, a terrible tragedy happened in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, New York City. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was located on the corner of Green Street and Washington Square. Back then, almost every company hired immigrants to work for them for little pay. They hired many workers, and everywhere was crowded with workers. The workers, mostly immigrants, worked for long hours, and the buildings were usually unsanitary and had dangerous working conditions.
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One terrible day in 1911, as the workday was just coming to an end, a person jumped out a window- from the eighth floor. Suddenly, another person jumped out. This happened again and again. Soon the ground was littered with dead bodies. Smoke billowed from the window, fire licked out the window, up to the ninth floor. Inside the building, it was chaos. People rushed towards the door to the stairwells. Others were cornered against the window by fire. They were soon forced to jump. The two hundred twenty five workers were all crowded on the stairs that were so narrow that they only let one person go down at a time. While all of the people were panic stricken, lots of people tripped and soon there was a huge mass of struggling bodies pushing towards the door. There were also two more escape routes, two freight elevators, which were blocked by heavy iron doors. The freight elevators were hand operated, and had six square feet of floor space. The elevators held a maximum of fifteen people, but on the last trips they made, the elevators held at least thirty people.   The conditions on the ninth floor were much worse. The first time someone tried to open a stairway door; they found that it was locked. No one on the ninth floor had seen the fire start, and no one on the ninth floor had gotten an emergency warning from a telephone like the workers on the tenth floor had. The ninth floor had two hundred forty sewing machines, each sitting on eight, seventy five foot tables. The flames came across the oil soaked wooden floors, spread onto the wooden chairs, and ignited: the sewing machines, empty wicker baskets, wicker baskets full of flammable shirtwaists, and fabric scraps. Barrels of sewing machine oil exploded. The elevators had just made their last trips. One elevator after some trips couldn’t go up because the tracks were bent. The other elevator was stuck in its place, and couldn’t go up or down at all. The building had had one fire escape, but almost no one knew about it. The windows leading to the fire escape had been locked and shuttered, closed for months. The fire escape was a rickety escape, and for some reason, ended at the second floor. There, a drop ladder extended for thirteen feet. The people who reached the bottom had to drop the remaining six feet.

The fire on the ninth floor blocked any chance of escape behind the terrified humans. The people sought refuge by a flimsy wooden barrier. Later, when firemen came up the stairs, they would find a pile of thirteen bodies in a room. Behind one locked door, they would also find a pile of twenty more bodies. Some workers never reached a stairway or door because: fire trapped them on all sides; they were so filled with fear that they couldn’t move; or that the aisles between the tables were so narrow and clogged with chairs and wicker baskets with completed work, fabric scraps, and other debris.

Still on the ninth floor, women backed away from the fire, towards the window, until they were soon forced to jump. Others, who were not trapped by the fire, jumped from table to table towards the door. A few other people were so frightened that they did not even try to escape. Those fortunate enough to hop across the tables often found the exits clogged with people.

Most people on the tenth floor went up to the roof. Everyone on the tenth floor survived, because some New York University students, (NYU), saw the burning building and the people on the roof, and rigged ladders over the buildings, and helped everyone climb over, onto neighboring roofs. Climbing ten stories above ground on a rickety ladder is not easy, but was better than jumping.

Perhaps the last person to escape was a small girl. One of the University students had gone across the ladder one last time to check that everyone was across and safe that went up to the roof. By now, the roof was covered with smoke, and he could only see a few feet around him. He thought it was empty, and was just going to go back across the ladder, when he heard the sound of moaning. He followed the sound, and found a young woman lying there. He dragged her across the roof to the ladder. The student knew that he could not carry the unconscious human across, so instead of carrying her, he wound his hands around her hair, and dragged her across the ladder.

The Triangle shirtwaist factory fire was a terrible tragedy, but it helped people know that safety should be made against fire, and it influenced fire escapes. It helped other people to be prepared so that if there ever was a fire, they would be ready to escape. Even though the firemen had the best fire fighting tools around, it was not enough. In just one disastrous half hour, one hundred thirty one women and fifteen men died.

Resources:

. DeAngelis, Gina. __Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911__. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001.