The Triangle Waist Factory was a three story building on top of the Asch Building, occupied with around 500, mostly female, workers from 16 to 23 years of age, this was recorded by the New York Times newspaper. [1] Even though in the building, the workers were spaced very poorly, barely a few feet away from each other, working in rough conditions, there was no worry of a fire, the building was fireproof. The owners of the factory, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck put their full trust in this fact.
It was March 25, 1911, the workers hurried to finish the cloths before a handful of minutes before closing time (4 pm) in the factory, a fire started on the eighth floor and within minutes, it confined to the eighth, ninth, and the tenth floor of the building. Leon Stein, the author of The Triangle Fire, wrote that outside of the factory, “many had heard the muffled explosion and looked up to see the puff of smoke coming out of an eighth-floor window. [2] The workers, on the top floors, had very few options to escape the flames since there was only one fire escape in the building, the windows and the exit doors were locked. The owners of the factory locked the windows and exit doors frequently, claiming that the workers “stole materials” or would leave early if they had the chance. There were also fire buckets, but the twist was that there was not any water in them.
Mary Domsky-Abrams, a young blouse operator, asked her manager Bonstein (? ) about the buckets on the morning of the tragedy. ‘Mr. Bonstein, why is there no water in the buckets? In case of a fire, there would be nothing with which to fight it,’ He became enraged at our group of price committee members, and with inhuman anger, replied: ‘If you’ll burn, there’ll be something to put out the fire. ‘” [3] It is unknown if the manager’s name is truly Bonstein, even Leon Stein, the interviewer, questioned her knowledge of the manager. The more appalling issue is how Bonstein views his workers, like they are only there to work and make him money.
On the eighth floor, Dinah Lifschitz, a telautograph operator, was still at her desk even as the flames work its way over to her. She had a telephone and a telautograph (a duplicating scriptwriter in order to send messages) on her desk, which she used to communicate to the upper floors. ” ‘I right away sent a message to the tenth floor on the telautograph,’ Dinah said. ‘But they apparently didn’t get the message because I didn’t get an answer. ‘” [2] Though her call did reach the tenth floor and warned the workers of the fire that started on the eighth floor, it was too late for many young workers.
Several minutes before the firefighters came to the scene, the girls began to jump. It was an eight-five feet from from the eighth floor and about a ninety-five feet fall from the ninth floor. There were about 54 half nude bodies lying on the pavement. The Chicago Sunday Tribune recorded the day after the tragedy, “bare legs… were burned a dark brown and waists and skirts in tatters showed that they had been torn in the panic within the building before the girls got to the windows to jump to death. ” [4].
Firefighters came to the scene prepared to extinguish the fire and reach the men and women who were trapped on the upper floors. Unfortunately, “the firemen’s ladders and hoses were too short for the tall building and could not reach the ninth and tenth floors”[3]. To help aid the factory workers as the fall to their demise, the firefighters held nets for the victims. The nets were too weak to capture the weights of the girls and as a result, many fell straight through to their deaths.
“Five girls who stood together at a window… eld their place while a fire ladder was worked toward them” because of how short the firemen’s ladders were, it only reached the sixth floor. “They leaped together, clinging to each other, with fire streaming back from their hair and dresses. They struck a glass sidewalk cover and it to the basement. There was no time to aid them”[1] because there were many other workers who were following in the girls’ footsteps. Near the Triangle Waist Factory was a law school building, which was just a story higher than the factory.
Two law students, Charles Kremer and Elias Kanter attempted to help the stranded victims. Kanter and the other students dragged two short ladders to the roof of the law school” they made an extension, by connecting the two shorter ladders together and “Kremer got down on to the roof of the burning building and tried to get the girls… and send them up the ladder” to safety. [4] By using this technique, these students managed to save 150 workers away from the fire. By the end of the fire, one hundred and forty-eight workers died, though one hundred and forty-one of them were instantly killed from: “leaps from the windows and down elevator shafts, or by being smothered. Seven died in the hospitals. “[4].
