100 years ago: Workplace fire in New York claimed 146 lives

If fire broke out at your workplace, the first thing you would do is GET OUT.  But what if you couldn't?  What if the doors were locked?  What if your employer had essentially locked you in during work hours?

Imagine the one fire escape collapsing under the weight of hundreds of people trying to flee the fire.  People desperately trying to jam into one elevator and finally screaming at windows, as they realized there was no way out.

That is what happened on March 25, 1911, in New York City at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.  It was one of the worst workplace disasters in our nation's history.  The factory was located in the top three floors of a 10-story building (a very tall building by the standards of the time).  It was a Saturday.  The factory made women's blouses.  Most of the employees were teenage girls or women in their 20s.

Fire broke out near the end of the workday.  Only one exit was unlocked.  This was so that the employees could be searched before they left by the one open exit.  Management was concerned about employees stealing, so the other exits were locked.

Fire blocked the one open exit.  The women and girls crammed into the elevator, but that was a slow method of evacuating hundreds of people from the building in the midst of the fire.  Workers trying to get on the elevator would find it already full to capacity with workers from another floor. The building had only one fire escape, and it collapsed from the weight of the people trying to escape.

Fire trucks came to the scene, but the ladders were not long enough to reach the women and girls screaming at the windows on the eighth, ninth, and 10 floors.  There was little that firefighters could do to help the people trapped inside.  In desperation, people began to jump out of the windows to their deaths.  Just as during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, many people chose to jump rather than be burned alive.

In the end, 146 people died. They included two 14-year-old girls who worked at the factory.

To learn more about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, we recommend the Cornell University website: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire