The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1911-03-29
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1911.
THE NEW YORK CALAMITY.


The pitying gaze of the entire country is turned
from time to time to section of the country which
been visited by appalling disaster or has peen
overtaken by terrible calamity sometimes IL Is
towards the East, witness the Windsor fire and the
burning of the Socum; sometimes it is towards the
West witness the San Francisco Earthquake; some
is towards the South, witness the galveston
Flood; sometimes it is towards the North witness the
Iroquois Fire; wherever and whenever the disaster
may have occurred there and then do the other more
fortunate sections the country turn their sorrow
full glances
Quite recently the East had a series of horri-
BILE accidents. First there was the Newark fire but
few ago with it's death list of forty odd Wom-
en- and girls Following close upon this came the ex-
ploson of the Power House of the New York Central
Railroad another long list of dead and injured
Hardly reverberations of this explosion dleu
away when the lower end of Manhattan was shaken
to it's depths by the dynamite explosion at Communl-
nav and this also carried its train the loss of hui
man life.
To-day the gaze of the country is again turned
to the East where New York holds to view the
worst factory fire that has ever been known with
the hardly believable death list OF over one huhoreu
and forty men, women and children
At 1886 O'Clock Saturday afternoon fire broke out
in the rear the eighth floor of the ten-story build
ing at the northwest corner of Washington Place
and Greene The source of this fire Will PROB
ably never be fully discovered. This floor and the
two above it occupied the factory OF the lr
angle Waist Company.
these
and men, women and children making waists. BY the
time the first alarm sounded the whole inside
was a flaming hell while from the street naught coulu
be at first but thin smoke trickling upwards
from the windows. 1t was not a spectacular hre
There was hardly enough smoke to blacken the sky
directly above the roof of the building and the city
closed up it's Saturday afternoons work, drew its pay
and went home dreaming of the awful disaster
that happening in its very midst
Scores and scores hemmed in the narrow
b, Tho
their seltonzed bodies still bending their work
showed the quckness but the not less horrible
panfulness of their death.
More than one hundred jumped from the windows
to death and still others crashed through the
life spread in vain to save them Still others
were literally roasted death and the bodies were
piled seven stories high in the elevator shaft
The horror of it is not essened by the fact that
many were just ready go home and in few minutes
all would have stopped for the day The pay
envelopes had been distributed and it was by these
that the Identification of many bodies was made.
The building was undoubtedly freproof and it is
a curious fact that this very thing was responsible
in no slight degree for the loss of lfe be-
cause the flames having nothing on which to feed in
the walls and floors necessarily concentrated on all the
they could find within. This food was the himsy
linens rolls of silk that make up the spring
and summer shirtwaists The result was veritable
furnace the flames of which fought upwards, mush-
against the roof and then started back down
the walls That the explanation of the fire Satur-
day, and before cloud of smoke leaked out to tell
the tale of terrible calamity within, the flames had
swished through those three floors and killed and
killed and killed.
Now New York is endeavorng fix the blame
for this terrible loss human life The District At
torney will undoubtedly probe arrests will probably
be made; the Grand Jury will act, the investigation
will of course be thorough and complete
There was, it seems, only inside fire escape
for all This led to a closed court. But the law of
New York does not require fire escapes so-caled
Are proof buildings that loft buildings as this
was
1t is also known that just such fire pre-
dcted and that in this very building an expert had
recommended the establishment of fire drill quite
Gently. The Fire Department of New York has been
demanding the placing of fire escapes all sides of
factory buildings Such law will in all probability
be enacted-too late of course to the lives
of those who perished Saturday-but in time to have
it's benefcent effect future disasters.
1t is easy to say that such and such thing ought
to be done in order to guard against repitition of
this wicked loss of lfe 1t is also to say that
very great and terrible blunder made by some
body and that this that system is to be blamed All
of these things said after every disaster of the
kind. They said after the burning of the Hotel
Windsor; they repeated after the burning of the
Socum they reiterated after the burning of the
Iroquois Theatre and they will be said being
said now, after the burning of this factory which
shows the outside barely enough evidence of black
sned walls to prove that the fire really took place.