It Takes A Tragedy
On March 25, 1911, 146 workers died in a fire in New York
City. None were famous, none were wealthy, and yet their deaths transformed our
lives.
They were locked in, on the 8th, 9th
and 10th floors of a building near Washington Square. The owners of
the company, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, locked the workers in, purportedly to
keep union organizers out.
Their trial for manslaughter lasted three weeks. More than
150 testified, among them survivors, firefighters, police officers, engineers,
and the accused themselves.
The victims of the fire were mostly young girls, teenagers,
immigrants from Russia, Italy, Romania, Austria, even Jamaica. They leapt from
the windows of the burning building and died on the sidewalks in front of the
helpless firefighters whose ladders only reached the 6th floor. The
elevator failed, the fire escape collapsed, the rows of machines obstructed
them, and the doors locked them in.
It’s been 106 years. Because of this disaster at the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, we have sprinkler systems, exit doors that swing
outward, and building codes that do not allow heaps of cloth and tissue paper
to pile up around workers. Exits must not be blocked, flammables must be stored
safely (there were barrels of oil standing under windows, and boxes blocking
the stairwells), and fire alarms.
Even with fire safety regulations on the books in New York,
factories were unsafe. Harris and Blanck got off, and were caught locking doors
again in 1913. It took another 20 years to get the same at the federal level, and
almost 50 years to get the regulations to stick, after 24 more died in another
fire in a garment shop in 1958.
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