“I was upstairs in our work room when one of the employees who happened to be looking out the window cried that there was a fire around the corner. I rushed downstairs, and when I reached the sidewalk, the girls were already jumping from the windows. None of them moved after they struck the sidewalk…”, Benjamin Levy said of his memories of the fire (“Stories”). The Triangle factory fire most likely started in a waste bin of cotton by a match or a cigarette butt, and a rack of clothes overhead caught fire (New). Max Rother tried putting the fire out with a nearby pail of water, but the rack of clothes fell on top of him (“Stories”). The fire spread impossibly quickly because of all of the fabric scraps on the floor and on the tables. Trying to get to the only fire escape was like going through an obstacle course: workers had to get around tables of sewing machines seventy-five feet long, back to back chairs, and waste baskets in the aisles (Kheel Center Image Identifier: 5780Pb39f15g). If people did not have to waste time crawling over tables and dodging chairs, they might have made it out safely (Kheel Center Image Identifier: 5780Pb39f15g). “There were flames all around in no time. Three girls, I think from the floor below, came rushing past me. Their clothes were on fire. I grabbed the fire pails and tried to pour the water on them, but they did not stop. They ran screaming toward the windows. I knew there was no hope there, so I stayed where I was, hoping the elevator would come up again,” Samuel Levine recalls from his memories of the time he was stuck in the burning building (“Stories”). Employees basically had four options - jump out of the ninth floor window, burn to death in the flames, be suffocated by the ... ... middle of paper ... ... in the workplace (Crumrine). Among many other things that they do, Interstates invests in over six hundred dollars’ worth of personal safety equipment for each employee (Crumrine). “It tells them ‘we want you to be safe’ and ‘we are investing in you, you are important to us’… It is good business (and the right thing to do) to do whatever it takes to send our people home every day just as well, and safe, as they came in the morning (Crumrine),” Mr. Crumrine says. In 1911, factory workers, especially those in the Triangle factory, were not respected or valued. This resulted in one of the worst factory fires in New York history. The whole catastrophe and 145 deaths could have been avoided if the rights of workers had not been ignored, and if factory supervisors had acknowledged their responsibility to their employees to provide safe and fair working conditions.
Factory workers worked twelve to fifteen hours a day in hazardous condition. There were no protective rules for women and children and no insurances for job-related accidents or industrial illness. The workers were obliged to trade at company store
Mary Domsky-Abrams; one of the few to get out of the building, in the beginning of the fire, she recalls talking to one of the managers named: Bonstein. “ As he came near us on that fateful day, one girl asked him, “Mr. Bonstein, why theres is not water buckets?. In case of 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.”
On July 13, 1900 Joseph Aschs’ new building plans in New York City are approved and by January 5, 1901 the building is complete. In 1906, the eighth floor of the Asch building is bought by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company who opens a factory there. Three years later, a letter is sent to the management of the Triangle Shirtwaist building from a fire prevention expert. He suggests they that a discussion about evaluating and enhancing safety measures. Unfortunately, management does not take the letter seriously and “the letter is ignored.” (Linder, “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial”) The inhumane work conditions in the factory led to the decision of twenty-five ILGWU workers to declare strike against th...
At the time of the fire the only safety measures available for the workers were 27 buckets of water and a fire escape that would collapse when people tried to use them. Most of the doors were locked and those that were not locked only opened inwards and were effectively held shut by the onrush of workers escaping the fire. As the clothing materials feed the fire workers tried to escape anyway they could. 25 passengers flung themselves down the elevator shaft trying to escape the fire. Their bodies rained blood and coins down onto the employees who made it into the elevator cars. Engine Company 72 and 33 were the first on the scene. To add to the already bleak situation the water streams from their hoses could only reach the 7th floor. Their ladders could only reach between the 6th and 7th floor. 19 bodies were found charred against the locked doors. 25 bodies were found huddled in a cloakroom. These deaths, although horrible, was not what changed the feelings toward government regulation. Upon finding that they could not use the doors to escape and the fire burning at their clothes and hair, the girls of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, aged mostly between 13 and 23 years of age, jumped 9 stories to their death. One after another the girls jumped to their deaths on the concrete over one hundred of feet below. Sometimes the girls jumped three and four at a time. On lookers watched in horror as body after body fell to the earth. "Thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead; thud -- dead.
On the fateful and unforgettable afternoon of June 17, 1972 Hotel Vendome experienced yet another fire. Actually it experienced several fires in different locations on this date. Electricians working on the first floor reported smoke coming from the upper floors, and a bartender reported smoke in the basement. All occupants in the basement café were safely escorted out, and 3 engine companies, 2 ladder companies, and 1 District Chief arrived on scene noticing ...
...rting again. The fire itself was seen for miles and the heat was so intense that there was “hardly a building within a one block radius that was not scorched” (Reporter Front Page). Extinguished fire brands were found in all parts of the Eastern section of the city. Some brands were even found in Lakeside Park. The force of the gas explosions in the garage blew debris from E 2nd and Marr to half way down Ellis St. This shows just how large the fire actually was.
Mrs. Rayfield wrote a great article about the devastation left over after this massive fire. I found that her accounts were very detailed and had good pictures to go along with them. I decided to use this source in my essay because she also showed the good effect that the fire had on the city not only the bad. She had a complete different point of view.
The early 1900s was a time of many movements, from the cities to the rural farms; people were uniting for various causes. One of the most widespread was the labor movement, which affected people far and wide. Conditions in the nation’s workplaces were notoriously poor, but New York City fostered the worst. Factories had started out in the city’s tenements, which were extremely cramped, poorly ventilated, and thoroughly unsanitary. With the advent of skyscrapers, factories were moved out of the tenements and into slightly larger buildings, which still had terrible conditions. Workers were forced to work long hours (around 12 hours long) six hours a day, often for extremely low pay. The pay was also extremely lower for women, who made up a large portion of the shirtwaist industry. If a worker were to openly contest an employer’s rule, they would be promptly fired and replaced immediately. Also, strength in numbers did not always work. Managers often hired brutal strikebreakers to shut movements down. The local police and justice were often of no help to the workers, even when women were being beaten. At the time, the workers needs were not taken seriously and profit was placed ahead of human life. This was not just a struggle for workers’ rights; it was also a movement for the working class’ freedom.
Many of the lives that were taken in the fire tried to fight their way out it but they could not, because doors were locked and also because they just could not escape. The story also involves stories of women and immigrant women’s who came to America to find a difference and fight hard to maintain their families. The Triangle Factory was three floors and was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the Triangle Waist Company produced shirtwaists, or women’s blouses and employed more than five hundred workers, many who were Jewish and Italian women. The author talks about how unjustly the girls were treated while working, being at work in the machine since seven in the morning and leaving the machine at 8 at night, with just a one-half hour lunch in that time. That was the life the girls were living in the shop, a life that could have been handled better. Many argument that Argersinger had were sweatshop conditions in the factories during this tragic event, development of series of laws and regulations to protect the safety of the
On April 17, 2013, the community of West, Texas, suffered a devastating and heartbreaking event in the evening hours. After a fire broke out inside the West Fertilizer plant, a massive explosion leveled the facility, caused millions of dollars in damage to surrounding buildings, and took the lives of over a dozen people. Sadly, the majority of those killed were volunteer firefighters who had responded to the fire and were unable to retreat to a safe distance before the explosion. Nearly 200 injuries were also reported to have been treated at local hospitals (Wood, 2013). The explosion was said to be caused by the combination of the fire and large stores of ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the plant.
It is the worker’s condition that he truly focuses on. Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible.
Working conditions were described as dangerous, dirty, unhealthy, polluted, dark, dim and drafty. These workers who worked very hard with their strong muscles in these horrible conditions were not valued. If they were hurt and could not work, they were simply replaced. This was also stated in Document 4, with the same thing happening to children. In conclusion, both adult and child workers were not valued equally and treated like garbage.
The documentary strived to show us how factories were corrupt that they couldn’t provide good working conditions for the workers until we lost people. This documentary is about the tragic fire that took place on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle factory. We can clearly see through this documentary that these people didn’t matter to the factory owners because their needs were not met. The documentary shows that the year before the fire took place the workers led a strike asking for better working conditions, but obviously their voices were not heard. After the fire took place this is when factories started improving working conditions. It is sad to learn that it took 146 lives of innocent people in order for factory owners to be convinced that they need to improve the poor working
Ethics and the Unions - Part 1. Industrial Workers of the World. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.iww.org/en/history/library/Dolgoff/newbeginning/1
The release of the hazardous material or exposure to the fire that ensues results in the need to evacuate 25 or more people