Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1911-04-06
In GREAT FIRE lin FACTORY
DISTRICT OF new YORK
CITY SATURDAY.
Many of Them Jumped From Tenth
Story to Streets, While Others Were
Smotbered or Burned to Death
Origin of Fire on Eighth Story a
Mystery About an Hour.

New York, March 26.-One hundred
and forty eight persons-nine- tenths of
them girls from the East Side-were
crushed to death on the pavements.
smothered i'll 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 waters 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 l0-story building at No. 23
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
GO 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 1850 clock were scattered
by the whizz of something rushing
through the air before them; there was
horrible thud on the pavement and
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 crowdiug to the stills.
Maddened Hundreds Behind.
''Don't jumpl" 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
stretched or the ladders raised, Eve
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 70
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
in SO short space of time could have
wrought such havoc.
Seven hundred hands, 500 of them
women, were employed by the shirt
waist company. They sat in rows at
their whirring machines, the lowest be-
dow them piled with fimsy cloth, the
floor Uttered with lint, the air itself
full of flying, infamamh'e dust.
Lungs Scared by Flames.
The first rush of flames was almost
an explosion, catching operators in
their chairs, their lungs scared by in
haling flames. Others rushed to tho
elevator shafts after the cars had made
their last trip. Still others were pushed
off the inadequate fire escape.
In such a horrible stream did the
bodies overflow from the windows that
the fire nets stretched by the first COM
pany to arrive were soon full Twelve
bodied weighted one net to the burst
ing point, but the bodies kept ON tumb-
ling to the pavement through meshes
that could not sustain them.