The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-03-27

AOOI' A40 Ieet from the cOrnlce OK the
roof. and the upward rush of the
draught and the crackle of the flames
drowned ~, cries.
Grab Wire; 1t Breaks.
Six girls fought their way to a win
dow on the ninth floor over the bodies
of fallen fellow workers and crawled
out in single file to an eight-inch stone
ledge running the length of the build
ing. More than a hundred feet above
the sidewalk they crept along their
perilous pathway to a swinging electric
feed wire spanning Washington place
The leaders paused for their compan-
ions to catch up at the end of the
ledge and the six grabbed the wire
simultaneously. 1t snapred like rot
ten whipcord and they crashed down
to death.
A 13-year-old girl hung for three min
utes by her fingertips to the sill of a
tentn-fioor window. A tongue of flame
licked at her fingers and she dropped
into lifenet '-ol7 by firemen. Two
women fell into the net at almost the
same moment. The strands parted and
tie two were added to the death list
A girl threw her pocketbook, then
her hat, then her furs from a tenth
floor window. moment later her
body came whirling after them to
DEATH
At a ninth-fioor window a man and
woman appeared. The man en-
braced the woman and kissed her.
Then he hurled her to the street and
jumped. Both were killed. Five girls
smashed a pane of glass. dropped in
a struggling tangle and were crushed
into a ShapeleSS mass.
Misses Fireman's Ladder.
A girl on the eighth floor leaped for
fireman's ladder, which reached
only to the sixth floor. She missed,
struck the edge of a life net and was
picked up with her back broken;
From one window a girl of about 13
years, q woman, man and two Wo-
men with their arms about one an
other threw thmselves to the ground
in rapid succession. The little girl
was whirled to the New York hospital
in an automobile. She screamed as
the driver and a policeman lifted her
into the hallway. A surgeon came out.
gave one look at her face and touched
her wrist.
"She is dead" he said.
One girl Jumped into a horse blank
ct held by firemen and policemen. The
blanket ripped like cheesecloth and
her body was mangled almost beyond
recognition. Another dropped into a
tarpaulin held by three men. Her
weight tore 1t from their grasp and
she struck the street, breaking almost
every bone in her body.
Almost at the same time man
somersaulted down upon the shoulder
of a policeman holding the tarpaultn
He glanced off, struck the sidewalk
and was picked up dead.
Elevator Saves a Few.
Within the building a man on the
eighth floor stationed himself at the
door of one of the elevators and with
club kept back the girls who had
stampeded the wire cage. Thirty were
admitted to the car at time. They
were rushed down as fast as possible
The call for ambulances was follow
40r
until 500 patrolmen arrived to cope
with a crowd numbering tens of thou
sands-a mixture of the morbidly
curious and of half-crazed relatives
and friends of victims.
A hundred mounted policemen had
to charge the crowd repeatedly to
On the tenth floor of the building ad-
Joining the BURNING structure Is tho
law department of New York univer-
sity. Here twenty-odd students were
listening to a lecture by Frank H.
Sommer, former sheriff of Essex county.
New Jersey. He saw the smoke and
saw the girls trapped on the roof.
He led his class to-the roof of the
university quarters. where they found
two ladders. The boys seized these.
bore them down two fligts to the roof
out of the windows and raised them to
the roof of the burning structure. Forty
girls were brought down to safety.
Slides Down Lift Gable.
Hyman Bescher, cutter, slid down
| the elevator cable and was found alive
at the bottom, standing in water up
to his armpits. His hands were lacer-
ated, his forehead was cut, but other
| wise he was unhurt.
''This calamity is just what 1 have
been predicting said Chief Croker.
There were no outside fire escapes OIL
] this building l have been advocating
and agitating that fire escapes be put
on buildings just such as this. This
| large loss of life is due to this neglect" :"
The police say that the fire is the
sixth or seventh in the building within
| twelve months, all of which, they say.
occurred in the shirtwaist factory. The
factory. incidentally, is said to be the
first in which operators struck during
the widespread shirtwaist strike settled
several months ago.
BY this disaster the total of shirt
waist operators who have perished in
New York and vicinity recently is
raised to nearly 200. Not many weeks
ago twenty-fiv girls met death under
somewhat similar circumstances in
Newark, N. ].
Story of Proprietor.
| Max Blanck, one of the proprietors of
the Triangle Waist company, said:
How or where the fire started have
no idea. There was no explosion, of
that I am sure. We who escaped by
the roof saw nothing of what happened
below us. Probably We were the last
persons to get out of the building alive
BY the time we reached the ground
whatever had happened was over
81 can not understand how the people
| on the eighth floor could not have es-
capped had they not been thrown into a
panic. They could have made their way
out by the fire escapes in the rear.
This means of rescue, however, was cut
eff from those on the ninth and tenth
floors by the flames"
There were about 800 persons at work
on the eighth floor when the fire
started.
Story of Eye Witness.
Max Rothen of 81 Washington ave-
nue.. the Bronx, a cutter in the en-
ploy of the Triangle Waist company