The Triangle Waist Factory Fire Tragedy
The information can be found on www.ilr.cornell/trianglefire/primary/letters/Charles Willis Thompson.html
The Triangle Waist Factory Fire tragedy can be used to avert future fire accidents to the people who work in Industrial factories or processing firms.
There are sources that can be referred to
‘’The New York Times ,March 26,1911,p.1’’ and ‘’A letter Wm sent from Willis Thompson Letters ,Rare and Manuscript Collections ,Cornell University ,Ithaca ,NY.
Other sources that one may be referred to are
Survivor Interviews and photos and illustrations.
This heart-touching information was compiled by Charles Willis Thompson.
This source is unique in that it describes in stark terms the disasters caused by man’s greed of which could be easily be prevented or averted. However ,this is hampered by the greed of the owner of the company as their main objective is minimizing the input while maximizing the output.
Shortly before the closing time on March 25, in 1911-there was a huge ball of fire at the Triangle Waist Factory -its three stories of a tenth-floor building. There wasn’t a fire exit at the back save for an interior fire escape .The company was owned by Isaac Harris and Max Blanck. There were 146 charred bodies of immigrant workers ,most of who were non-English speakers .Nearly all were the breadwinners of their families. It was the ugliest calamity ever since the Industrial Revolution.
This fire tragedy happened more than a century ago but it is a fresh wound not only to those who lost their beloved ones but also to the local and overseas labor movement. To the victims ,the martyrs …and to the owner’s of the company ,a witty proverb can sum it all: a martyr dies and his rule begins ,a tyrant dies and his rule ends. Lives of the victims, comprising of teenagers as young as 15, were nipped at the bud where most of the victims were very young girls between ages 16 and 23.
The building being fireproof raises a curious blow how the building went to the Hell’s Gate.
The fire tragedy can be a great lesson to current factories as it shows the severe bad conditions that industrial workers work under.
It may seem a fairy tale to say that the fire was 100 feet above the street ,but even if it may not ring bells to you, yes it was. The victims either met their deaths through suffocation and their bodies cremated or burnt alive. Some of the unfortunate jumped the nerve-wrecking 100 feet ,landing on the pavement with a thud .On Greene Street were what looked like some kind of goods ,burnt down to ashes. It was shapeless. On closer look and sober reflection of it ,there was some matted blood on it. The human parts that make it quick to recognize a human corpse-the legs ,arms and the neck- were charred leaving an out of shape and stranger than fiction torso .It is said to be the most murderous fire which New York had witnessed for a long time.
A heap of corpses were on the sidewalk for more than an as the Fire and Rescue men battled the fire. All were too busy to try to help the victims of whom they thought couldn’t be helped in any way. Later when the firemen and the police could give heed, among the heaps of the charred of corpses, a girl was still breathing and two minutes later after being found she went the way of all flesh. It points clearly to the firemen’s and the policemen’s professional negligence.
To describe the conditions of the identity of the victims after the tragedy ,the charred remains of the bodies lay at a Morgue waiting for their kith and kin to come forward and identify their relatives by a tooth or the what was left of their shoes.
Another victim who survived the ordeal was Hyman Meshel, found four hours after the fire was known. He was in the basement ,his head immersed in water head below the elevator’s floor. The cause of the fire could have been averted as the former workers ,Jewish employees had united and voiced for better working conditions ,and the new workers had worked under the same conditions .Second ,the same building had got four previous fires and though it had been reported to the Fire Department as unsafe because of its insufficient fire escape routes ,the department had done nothing to avert or prevent future fire tragedies.
Other sources may be the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor in Russia from which due to the dripping of water to the reactor there was a huge cloud of radioactive materials, stretching for two kilometers .Also another recent example can be that of the Nuclear accident in Japan .Even though it can be said to be caused by a natural disaster ,it clearly shows the man’s tragedy unpreparedness.
