Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1911-03-31
IN GREAT FIRE In FACTORY
DISTRICT OF NE v YORK
CITY SATURDAY.
Many of Them Jumped From Tenth
Story to Streets, While Others Were
Smothered or Burned to Death
Origin of Fire on Eighth Story a
Mystery-Lasted About an Hour.

New York, March 26.-Onei hundred
and forty-eight persons-nine- tenths of
them girls from the East Side-were
crushed to death on the pavements.
smothered in smoke or burned to a
crisp in factory fire Saturday after
noon in the worst disaster New York
has known since the ship General Slo.
cum was burned to the water S edge
off North Brother island in 1904.
One hundred and forty-one bodies
were removed from the ruins by mid
night and seven of the forty injured
died in hospitals. This, it is believed.
completes the list of dead, most of
whom are unidentified.
Grief crazed relatives besieged 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 eighth, ninth and 10th
floors of a 10story building at No. %
Washington place, on the western
fringe of the downtown wholesale dis
trict. Partners of the firm, Isaac Har
ris and Max Blanck, escaped.
No Outside Fire Escape.
There was not an outside fire escape
on the building.
How the fire started perhaps never
will 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 so bodies were found,
63 more persons were crushed to death
by jumping and more than 80 clogged
the elevator shafts. Loss to the prop,
erty will not exceed 100000.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place to Washington
square at $3.50 clock were scattered
by the whizz of something rushing
through the air before them; there was
, u horrible thud on the pavement and
, a body fattened on the fagstones.
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 stills.
MduQ6u6u t1uuuT6US b6ulnQ.
''Don t jump" yelled the crowd but
, the girls had no alternative. The pres
sure of the maddened hundreds behind
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 re-
= spond, before the nets could be
J 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 half
an hour it had done its worst-prob-
ably the death list was complete in 20
minutes.
The building stands tonight as a
!, shell intact; the partitions of archi-
tectural thing between floor and floor
are sound, and it is impossible for one
who sees it to imagine how the flames
e in so short a space of time could have
J. wrought such havoc.
| hCNCh OOO VI thSiA
> women, were employed by the shirt
= waist company. They sat in rows at
), their whirring machines, the lowest be
g low them piled with fiimsy cloth, the
- floor Uttered with lint, the air itself
q full of flying, inflamamh'e dust.
e Lungs Scared by Flames.
e The first rush of flames was almos
Is an explosion, catching operators IL
= their chairs, their lungs scared by IN
haling flames. Others rushed to tn
- elevator shafts after the cars had mad
:, their last trip. Still others were pushed
- off the inadequate fire escape.
In such horrible stream did tn
n bodies overflow from the windows tina
9 the fire nets stretched by the first com
al pany to arrive were soon full. lively
a bodied weighted one net to the burst
,e ing point, but the bodies kept on tump
ID ling to the pavement through meshe
re that could not sustain them.