Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1911-03-27

ana WIN winning steps III tli' t"iii7'
Entrance to the stairs were blocked
by partitions. From indications gates
and doors appeared to have been lock-
cd at the time of the fire.
The building. itself, said CommlS-
sioner Waldo, seemed to comply VITA
the law governing the erection oi fire
proof structures. The owner OF the
building. j. j. Aseh Of South NorWalk,
CT, arnarentiy had observed the reg
ulations Of the building department,
he said.
New York, March 25.--0ne hundred
and forty-cight soulS-nin"-ten OF
them girls from the East Side--were
crushed to death on the pavemcntS
smothered in smoke or Shriveled crisp
in a factory fire this afternoon IN the
worst disaster New York has known
since the steamship Gen. Slocum was
burned to the waters edge of Nofth
Brothers island in 1904. when 1920 per
sons. mostly women and children per-
ished.
There was not an outside fire escape
on the building.
How the fire started will perhaps
never be known. A corner on the
eighth floor was its point of origin and
the three upper floors only were swept
ON the ninth floor 20 bodies were
found; 63 or more We're crushed to
death by jumping and more than 80
elogged the elevator shafts. The loss
to property will not exceed 100000
1t was the most appalling horror
since the Slocum disaster and the
Iog two, Era in,
available ambulance in Manhattan was
called upon to cart the dead to the
morgue-bodies eharred to unrecog-
niZable blackness or Redeemed to
sickly hue-aS was to be seen by
shoulders or limbs protruding through
flame eaten clothing. Men and women,
boys and girls were of the dead that
Uttered the street: that is actually the
condition-thc streets We're Uttered
The fire began in the eighth story
The flames licked and shot their way
up through the other two stories. All
three floors were occupied by the
Triangle Waist Company. The csti-
mate of the number of the employees
at work is made by Chief Croker at
about 1000. The propretors of the
company say 200 men and girls We're
in the place.
Whatever the number, they had no
chance of escape. Before smoke or
fame gave signs from the windows
the loss of life was fully under way.
The first signs that persons in the
street knew that these three top stories
had turned into red furnaces in which
human creatures were being caught
and incincrated was when screaming
men and women and boys and girls
crowded out on the many window
Lodges and threw themselves into the
streets far below.
Wayfarers on the opposite of the street
shaded their eyes against the setting sun
and saw the windows of the three upper
floors of the building black with girls
crowdns to the sils. There were no
fire escapes.
Don't jump, don't jump yelled the
crowd. But the girls had no choice.
The pressure of the maddened hundreds
behind them and the urging of their own
fears We're too strong.
-Four alarms were rung within IS min
ntes. Before the engines could respond,
before the nets could be stretched or the
ladders raised. five girls had fallen from
the eight and ninth floors so heavily that
they broke through iron roofs of the sub
cellars 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 fun in % minutes.
The building stands on a corner with
exposure on TWO sides, but the only fire
light and air shaft In all there We're sew
en- exits, the single fire escape, two
freight elevators at the rear, two pas
scnser elevators in front and two stair
ways. All Of them proved almost useless.
and practically all who escaped eithe"
'clilnbed 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 tonight with shell
intact and barely SCARED, and il is i'm
possible for one who did not see it to i'm
agine how the flames in SO short space
could have wrought such havoc
Seven hundred hands. 500 of them
women. were employed by the shirtwaist
company. They sat in rows at their whir-
ring machines, the tables before them
piled with himsy cloth, the floors Uttered
with lint. the air itself fun of flying
inflammable dust.
The first rush of flame was almost an
explosion. Operators died in their chairs,
their lungs scared by inhalinS flame.
Others were crowded into the elevator
shafts after the cars had made their last
trip. Still others We're pushed off the in
adequate interior fire escape.
In such a horrible stream did the bodies
overflow from the windows that the fire
nets, stretched by the first companies to
arrive, were soon goreed beyond capacity.
Twelve bodies weighted one net to the
bursting point, but the bodies kept on
raining to the pavement, through mesh
&C thnt cnnll IL lalLa..l. s.lirnart Lap