Rocky Ford enterprise., 1911-03-31
SCORES OF PANIC STRICKEN
GIRLS LEAP FROM WINDOW
TO PAVEMENT BELOW.
MANY IN HOSPITALS
ONE HUNDRED AND FoRTY.oNE
BODIES HAVE BEEN
RECOVERED.

New York.-What will go down in
history as the fire disaster of Wash
iIgton Square" entered upon its after
math with eighty-two of nearly $50
victims identified.
The official death list has been les
sened, rather than increased.
A revised count shows 141 dead.
with twelve women and girls at
deaths door in the hospitals.
One hundred and fifty. all told, will
perhaps conservatively cover the
casualties when those whose horri-
tle hurts and burns seem fatal shall
have Joined their fellow workers In
pine coffins at the morgue.
Careful counting still rates the fe-
male victims. young and old. at ten
10 every one male.
Broadly speaking, they were Jew
ish and Italian. living either on the
East Side or In n small Italian quar-
ter near the scene Of the fire.
New York.-One hundred and forty
eight persons-nine-tenths OF them
girls from the East Side-were
crushed to death on the pavements.
smothered In smoke. or burned to a
crisp In a factory fire In the worst dis
aster New York has known since the
steamship General Slocum was
burned TO the waters edge off North
Brothers island in 1901
One hundred and forty-one bodies
have. been removed from the ruins
and seven of the forty injured had
died in hospitals.
This. il is believed. completes the
list OF dead. most of whom are un-
identified. Grief crazed relatives be-
sieged the morgue as the bodies were
laid out.
Nearly all. II not all of the victims
were employed by the Triangle Waist
Company. on the eighth. ninth and
tenth floors of a ten-story loft build.
ing at No. % Washington place. on
the western fringe OF the downtown
wholesale clothing. fur and millinery
district. =
The partners OF the firm. Isaac Har-
ris and Max Blanck, escaped un.
scathed from the office on the tenth
floor. carrying with them over an ad-
joining roof Blanck's two young
daughters and a governess.
There was not an outside fire es-
cape on the building.
How the fire started perhaps will
never be known. a corner on the
eighth floor was its point of origin
and the three upper floors only were
swept.
SiXty-three or more persons were
crushed to death by jumping.
Mora than thirty cInvUad sha ola.
vator shafts.
Loss to property will not exceed
100000.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington Place to Washington
Square at ten minutes to five o'clock
were scattered by the whizz of some
thing rushing through the air before
them; there was a horrible thud on the
pavement and a body flattened on the
flagstone.
Wayfarers on the opposite side OF
the street shaded their eyes against
the setting sun and saw the windows
of the three upper floors OF the build
ing black with girls crowding to the
sills.
Don't jump. don't jump" yelled the
crowd, but the girls had no alterna-
tive.
The pressure Of the maddened hun.
dreds behind them and the urging Of
their own fears were too strong. They
began to fall to the sidewalk.
Four alarms were rung within fiji.
teen minutes. Before the engines could
respond. before the nets could be
stretched or the ladders raised five
girls had fallen from the eighth and
ninth floors SO heavily that they broke
through the glass and iron roofs Of
the sub-cellars and crashed through
the very streets to the vaults below.