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N0KFQ > TODAY 25.03.15 17:00l 86 Lines 4334 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 51199_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Mar 25
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Sent: 150325/1500Z 51199@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.63
1911
Fire kills 145 at Triangle Shirtwaist factory
In one of the most infamous incidents in America's industrial
history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City
burns down on this day in 1911, killing 145 workers. The tragedy
led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that
better protected the safety of factory workers.
The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was
located in the top three floors of the Asch Building, on the
corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, in Manhattan. It
was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked
in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines. Nearly all the
workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English and made
only about $15 per week working 12 hours a day, every day. In
1911, there were four elevators with access to the factory
floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to
file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. There
were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from
the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward.
The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for
all the workers to use it, even in the best of circumstances.
The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was
well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment
industry and city government generally ensured that no useful
precautions were taken to prevent fires. The Triangle Shirtwaist
factory's owners were known to be particularly anti-worker in
their policies and had played a critical role in breaking a large
strike by workers the previous year.
On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the
factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The manager attempted to
use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful, as the
hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. As the fire grew,
panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the
elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was
able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down
amid the heat and flames. In a desperate attempt to escape the
fire, the girls left behind waiting for the elevator plunged down
the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells
also met awful demises_when they found a locked door at the
bottom of the stairs, many were burned alive.
Those workers who were on floors above the fire, including the
owners, escaped to the roof and then to adjoining buildings. As
firefighters arrived, they witnessed a horrible scene. The girls
who did not make it to the stairwells or the elevator were
trapped by the fire inside the factory and began to jump from the
windows to escape it. The bodies of the jumpers fell on the fire
hoses, making it difficult to begin fighting the fire. Also, the
firefighters' ladders reached only seven floors high and the fire
was on the eighth floor. In one case, a life net was unfurled to
catch jumpers, but three girls jumped at the same time, ripping
the net. The nets turned out to be mostly ineffectual.
Within 18 minutes, it was all over. Forty-nine workers had burned
to death or been suffocated by smoke, 36 were dead in the
elevator shaft and 58 died from jumping to the sidewalks. With
two more dying later from their injuries, a total of 145 people
were killed by the fire. The workers' union set up a march on
April 5 on New York's Fifth Avenue to protest the conditions that
had led to the fire; it was attended by 80,000 people.
Despite a good deal of evidence that the owners and management
had been horribly negligent in the fire, a grand jury failed to
indict them on manslaughter charges. The tragedy did result in
some good, though_the International Ladies Garment Workers Union
was formed in the aftermath of the fire and the Sullivan-Hoey
Fire Prevention Law was passed in New York that October. Both
were crucial in preventing similar disasters in the future.
Exactly 79 years to the day after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory
fire, another tragic fire occurred in New York City. The blaze,
at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx, killed 87 people, the
most deadly fire in the city since 1911.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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