The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1911-03-27
RAIN OF BODIES
TO THE STREET
Victims Jump From Window
Lodges With Clothing
AfIame, and Pile Up below,
Dead and DYING Only
One Fire Escape.


and forty one souls-nine- tenths of then
girls from the east side--were crushed
TO death on the pavements, smotherec
In smoke, or shriveled crisp Saturday
afternoon in the worst fire New York
has known since the steamship Gen Slo,
cum was burned to the waters edge of
North Brothers island in 1904. One hun
bred and forty-one bodies had been re,
moved from the ruins at midnight, and
seven of the fatally injured had died
in hospitals. Grief crazed relatives be-
sieged the morgue as the bodies were
laid out.
Nearly all, if not all, of the victims
were employed by the Triangle Waist
company on the sth, 9th, and 10th floors
of a l0.story loft building at 90 Wash
ington place, on the western fringe of
the downtown wholesale clothing, fur
and millinery district. The partners of
the firm, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck,
escaped unscathed from the office on the
10th floor, carrying with them over an
adjoining roof Blanck's two young
daughters and governess. There was
not an outside fire escape on the build.
ing
How the fire started will perhaps never
be known. A corner on the eighth floor
was its point of origin, and the three up
per floors only were swept. On the ninth
floor so bodies were found; SO or more
we're crushed to death by jumping and
more than 80 clogged the elevator shafts
The loss of property will not exceed
100000. Pedestrians going home
through Washington place to Washing
ton square at 10 minutes to were scat
tered by the whiz of something rushing
through the air before them; there was
horrible plop on the pavement and
body hattened on the flags. Wayfarers
on the opposite side Of the street shad.
ed their eyes against the setting sun
and saw the windows of the three upper
floors of the building black with girls
crowding to the stills. There were no
fire escapes. Don't jump, don't iump!"
yelled the crowd. But the girls had no
choice, The pressure of the maddened
hundreds behind them and the urging
of their own fears were too strong.
Four alarms were rung within Is min
utes. Before the engines could respond,
before the nets could be stretched OF the
ladders raised, five girls had fallen from
the eighth and ninth floors so heavily
that they broke through the glass ana
iron roofs of the subcellars and crashed
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 90
minutes. The building stands on cor
ner, with exposure on two sides, but
the only fire escape was on the interior,
opening on a light and air shaft. In
oil there were seven exits-the single
fire escape, two freight elevators at the
rear, two passenger elevators in front
and two stairways. All of them proved
almost useless, and practically all who
escaped either climbed to the roof and
scrambled thence to the roof of the
building occupied by the American Book
company adjoining, or fled in the first
rush for safety before the crush and
smoke grew too thick.
The building stands now with she'll in
tact and barely Scared and it is inn
possible for one who did not see it 10
imagine how the flames in so short
space could have wrought such havoc.
Seven hundred hands, 500 of them won.
en-, were employed by the shirtwaist
company. They sat in rows at their
whiTring machines the tables before
them piled with flimsy cloth, the floors
Uttered with lint, the air itself full Of
flying, inflammable dust. The first rush
of fame was almost an explosion. Oper-
ators died in their chairs, their lungs
scared by inhaling flame. Others were
crowded into the elevator shafts after
the cars had made their last trip. Still
others were pushed or the inadequate
interior fire escape.
Bodies Raining to the Pavement
In such q horrible stream did the
bodies overflow from the windows that
the fire nets, stretched by the first com.