The Thibodaux sentinel. (Thibodaux, La.) 1905-1912, 1911-04-01
FIRE CLAIMS $50 LIVES
VICTIMS CRUSHED BY JUMPING,
SMoTHERED AND cREMATED.
HAD NO MEANS OF ESCAPE
Girls Jump From Eighth, Ninth ana
Tenth Floors to Pavement.
Employers Escape.

nlne-tenthS OF them girls from the east
side. were crushed to death on the
pavements, smotherud BY. smoke or
shriyeled to crisp in the worst fire
New York has known since the steam.
ship General slocum was burned to
the waters edge off North Brothers
Island in 1904.
Nearly all, if not all, of the victims
were employed by the Triangle Waist
floors of a ten-story loft building at
No. % Washington Place, on the west.
ern edge of the downtown wholesale
clothing, fur and millinery district.
The partners of the firm, Isaac Har.
ris and Max Blanck, escaped unscath.
ed from the office on the tenth floor,
carrying with them over an adjoining
roof Blanck's two young daughters and
a governess. There was not an out
side fire escape on the building.
How the fire started will perhaps
never be known. A corner on the
eighth floor was it's point of origin and
the three upper floors only were swept.
On the ninth floor fifty bodies were
found, sixty-three or more persons
were crushed to death by jumping and
more than thirty clogged the elevator
shafts. The loss to property will not
exceed 100000.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place to Washington
Square at 4:50 o'clock were scattered
by the whizz of something rushing
through the air before them; there
was horrible thud on the pavement
and body fiattened on the flags.
Rain Of Flesh and Blood.
Don't jump; don't jump" yelled the
crowd, but the girls had no alternative.
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 in ter
rible rain of flesh and blood.
Four alarms were rung within fif-
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 very streets into the
vaults below. In an hour the fire was
out; in half an hour it had done its
worst. Probably the death list was
full in twenty minutes.
The building stands on corner with
an exposure on two streets, but the
only fire escape was in the interior,
opening on light and air shaft.
In all there were seven exits-the
single fire escape, two freight eleva-
tors at the rear, two passenger eleva-
tors in front and two stairWays. ALI
of them proved almost useless and
practically all who escaped either
climbed through the roof and scramb-
led thence to the building occupied by
the American Book Company, adjoin-
ing, or fed in the first rush for safety
before the crush and the smoke grew
too thick.
Seven hundred persons, 500 of them
women, were employed by the COM
pany. They sat in rows at their whirr-
ing machines, the tables before them
piled with f1imsy cloth, the floor litter
ed with lint, the air itself full of fly
ing infiammable dust. The first rush
of fame was almost an explosion. OPP
orators died in their chairs, their lungs
scared by inhaling flames. Others were
crowded into the elevator shafts after
the cars had made their last trip. Still
others were pushed off the Inadequate
interior fire escape.
In such a horrible stream did the
bodies overflow from the windows that
the fire net stretched by the first COM
pany to arrive, were soon gorged be-
yond capacity. Twelve bodies weight
ed one net to the bursting point, but
the bodies kept on tumbling to the
pavement, through meshes that could
no longer support them.