The Yale expositor., 1911-03-30
146 LIVES LOST IN
FIRE IN NEW YORK
GIRLS IN FACTORY CAUGHT IN
TRAP LEAP TO DEATH-NO
FIRE ESCAPES.
BURST OF FLAME IMPRlSON 700
SHiRTWAiST HANDSPRING
SEXES VICTIMS.
Blaze Confined to Three Upper
Stories of Ten-Story Building,
Does Its Death-DeaIing Work
In About Twenty Minutes.

One hundred and fifty persons, the
great majority of them East Side
Jewish girls, met death in its most
awful form in New York city in the
short space Of time between 4 80 and
$40 o'clock Saturday. They either
leaped screaming to their death Oil
the hard pavement or fell back
burned and suTocated into the burn
ing eighth, ninth and tenth floors of
the building at % Washington Place,
occupied as factory by the Tri-
angle Shirtwaist company, which was
not provided with solitary outside
fire escape. although 700 operators
500 of them women, daily worked on
these floors. The building, now a
charnel house, stands on the western
fringe of the downtown wholesale
clothing, fur and millinery district
The partners of the firm, Isaac
Harris and Max Blanck. escaped I'M
scathed from the Office on the tenth
floor, carrying with them over an
adjoining room Blanck's two young
daughters and governess.
Cause Of the Fire a Mystery.
How the fire started will perhaps
eighth floor was its point of origin,
and the three upper floors only were
swept On the ninth floor fifty bodies
were found; sixty-three or more per-
SONS were crushed TO death by jump
ing and more than thirty clogged the
elevator shafts. The loss to property
will not exceed 100000.
Terrible Rain of Flesh and Blood.
Don't jump! Don't jump" yelled
the crowd. But the girls had no al
tentative. The pressure of the mad
dened hundreds behind them and
the urging of their own fears were
too strong. They began to fall to
the sidewalk in a terrible rain of
flesh and blood.
Four alarms were rung within -
minutes.
The building stands on corner,
with exposure on two sides. but the
only fire escape was an interior, open
ing on light and airshaft. In all there
were seven eXits--the single fire es-
cape, two freight elevators at the
rear, two passenger elevators in front,
and two stairways. All Of them
proved almost useless and prac-
tically all WHO escaped either climbed
to the roof of the building occupied
by the American Book company, ad-
Joining or fed in the first rush for
safety, before the crush and the smoke
grew too thick.
Building Stands Monument to Havoc.
The building still stands with shell
intact and barely scarred-rather
only smudged the partitions of
architectural thing between floor and
floor are sound, and ii is impoS-
sible for one who did not see it to
imagine how the flames in so short
space could have wrought such havoc
Seven hundred hands, 800 of them
women, were employed by the shirt
waist company. They sat in rows at
their whirring machines, the tables be.
fore them piled with flimsy cloth. the
floors Uttered with lint, the air it.
self full of flying, inflammable dust.
The first rush of flame was almost
an explosion. Operators died at their
chairs, their lungs scared by inhaling
flame. Others were crowded into the
elevator shafts after the cars had
made ther last trip. Still others were
pushed off the inadequate interior
fire escape.
In such horrible stream did the
bodies overflow from the windows
that the fire nets, stretched by the
first companies to arrive, were soon
gorged beyond capacity. Twelve
bodies weighted one net to the burst
ing point, but the bodies kept on
tumbling to the pavement, through
meshes that could no longer support
them.