Heppner gazette. [volume] (Heppner, Morrow County, Or.) 1892-1912, 1911-03-30
CHEER ROOSEVELT.
Audience AppIauds Approval Of
CALIFORNIA; Lawmakers.
Victims Nearly All Women and Girls,
Who Meet Death in Flames or
Leap to Pavement.

New York, March, 27.-One hun
and forty-eight persons, nine-tenths of
them girls from the East Side, were
crushed to death on the pavements,
smothered by smoke or burned to crisp
Saturday afternoon in the worst fire
known since the steamer Slocum was
burned to the waters edge off North
Brother island in 1904.
One hundred and forty-one bodies
have been removed from the ruins and
seven of the injured died in hospitals.
This, it is believed, completes the list
of dead, most of whom are uniden-
titled.
Grief-crazed relatives besieged the
morgue as the bodies were laid out.
Nearly, if not all, of the victims were
employed by the Triangle Waist com
pany on the eight, ninth and tenth
floors of 1O-story loft building at %
Washington place, on the western
fringe of the downtown wholesale dis
trict.
Partners of firm, Isaac Harris and
Max Blanc, escaped, carrying with
them over an adjoining roof Blanck's
two young daughters and governess.
There was not an outside fire escape
on the building.
How the fire started will probably
never be known. A corner on the
eighth floor was its point of origin
and only the three upper floors were
swept.
On the ninth floor 80 bodies were
found, 63 or more persons were crushed
to death by jumping, more than 30
clogged the elevator shafts. Loss to
property will not exceed $4,000
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place at A so o'clock were
scattered by the whiz of something
rushing through the air before them;
there was horrible thud on the pave
ment and body fattened on the flag
stones. 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 building black with girls crowding
to the sills.
"Don't jump!" yelled the crowd.
But the girls had no alternative. The
pressure of the maddened hundreds be-
hind them and the urging of their own
fears were too strong. They began to
fall to the sidewalk.
Four alarms were rung within Is
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
crashed through the very streets to
the vaults below. In an hour the fire
was out; in 80 minutes it had done its
worst; probably the death list was
complete in 20 minutes.
The building stands on corner
with exposures on two sides, 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 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 Amer
ican Book company adjoining, or fled
in the first rush for safety before the
crush and smoke grew too thick.
The building stands now as she'll
intact; the partitions of architectural
tiling between floor and floor are
sound, and it is impossible for one
who sees it to imagine how the flames
in so short a time could have wrought
such havoc.
Seven hundred hands, 500 of them
women, we're employed by the shirt
waist company. They sat in rows at
their whirring machines, the tables
before them piled with fimsy cloth,
the floor Uttered with lint, the air it
self full of flying, infammable dust.