Connecticut western news., 1913-07-24

Fleeing From olmxo ln Ilotnlnn Fao-
 tory, Girls Blockade Escapes and
 Flames Reach Them Before Aid
 comss-Die Like Rats In View of
 Thousands.
 A fire which started in the Bing- hamton Clothing factory, at Bingham ton, N. Y., destroyed the building in twenty minutes and badly damaged the factory of Mitchell & Church, the Automatic Music company, and other business places.
 One hundred and twenty-five girls were in the overall factory when the fire was discovered.
 Of these at least fifty perished and fifty others were badly hurt Many of the injured will die.
 Twelve girls were taken to the hos pital badly injured. There were sick. ening scenes when the girls, cllnging to Are escapes, were swept by sheets of flame or jumped. from the factory windows.
 Second and third alarms were turned in and every available piece of ap- paraeus in the city set to work. Mean while ambulance calls had been sent out and the ringing of ambulance bells added to the confusion.
 D. J. Lawrence, bookkeeper of the company, said that he was working in the ofice posting when the first alarm sounded. The flames were under the front stairway. There also was rear | -Au -1 ae side of the building.
 Most of the women were employees in the machine operating room on the fourth floor. They made no at tempt to hurry from the building at nrst, thinking that the alarm was for a fire drill. Messengers rushed through the building to drive the women out
 Just then the whole building burst into flames. It was of factory con- struction, with timber supports and brick walls. But it went up as though 1t had been powder. When the flames rushed up the front stairway it was awful The women were in a panic in an instant They rushed to the fire escapes and many of them leaped from the windows.
 There were 125 names on the pay rolls and some of the employees were gone on vacation. The lists were all in the safe and were burned up, so that it was impossible to call the roll and get a line on those who are miss ing.
 The suffering women, bloodstained and overcome with smoke and fright were carried into the Knickerbocker garage Here all the available phy- sicians in the city were called and au- tomobiles were pressed into service to carry the injured to the city hos pital They were wrapped in blan- kets, some badly burned, and rushed to the hospital as rapidly as possible.
 Meanwhile the firemen had been striving against odds and their efforts were partly successful.
 They succeeded in checking the ad- vance of the flames along the Water street side, but every building on the west side of Water street between Spice alley and Henry street was more or less damaged.
 F1imsy fire escapes added to the horrons of the holocaust. Within an instant after the sheet of flame first swept through the five story building used as the overall works, the rtckety fire escapes were choked with girls seeking to escape. They piled one on top of the other. many bodies deep, and there they roasted to death as the flames burst out of the windows and licked about them.
 A rush to the fire escapes, which were only on one side of the building. started from every floor. As the first ones to the foot of the narrow Iron stairways reached the bottom they found no way to get down. Before any help could reach them tbose who came after were piling down on top of them. not running down the iron stairs. but jumping down and form ing an inextricable mass of humanity | on tha ffney framework