Triangle Factory Fire 1 2 New York A Documentary Film, Ep4) avi

(solemn cello music)

MALE NARRATOR:
Late on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25th, 1911,

the 500 employees of the Triangle Shirt Waist
Company were racing to fill their quotas.

Teenage girls, for the most part,
eager to finish up, collect their pay,

and plunge into the mild spring evening.

Around 4:45 pm, with just 15 minutes left
in the work day, someone on the 8th floor

must have dropped a match or a burning cigarette

into the heaps of discarded fabric
that littered the shop floor.

JOSHUA FREEMAN:
Triangle Shirt Waist Company occupied

the top floors of a ten story building
and a fire broke out.

Apparently someone had dropped a cigarette
into a drawer

that held what they called remnants,
or scraps of cloth, and the fire started pretty quickly

and the doors were locked,
allegedly to keep out Union organizers.

This was a company that resists Unionization,
or was trying to.

So, with this rapidly spreading fire,
there was really very little way to get out,

and there is always a horrible carnage.

NARRATOR:
Within seconds, the combustible litter of cloth
and tissue paper had burst into flames,

and before anyone could stop it,
the fire began to spread

with startling speed
from one stack of fabric to another.

As cries of panic went out,
and terrified workers scrambled for the exits.

ROSIE SOFFRAN:
I heard somebody cry "Fire."

I ran for the door on the Washington Place side,
but the door was locked,

and immediately there was a great jam
of girls before it.

Some girls were screaming,
some were beating the door with their fists,

some were trying to tear it open.
--Rosie Soffran

It was horrifying.

It was a large loft in which the doors
had been locked from the outside,

and so when the fire began,
the women working at the machines tried

to get out of the exits, could not move the doors,
and there are accounts of bodies

being crushed up against the doors,
and of women trying to escape.

NARRATOR:
Most workers on the 10th floor managed to escape

helped to safety across an adjoining rooftop
by students from New York University.

Hundreds more made it down by elevator--
30 people at a time jammed into cars

meant to hold half that number.

But by 4:55, the searing heat had forced
the last of the elevators out of service.

And with the fire now spreading
from the 8th floor to the 9th,

nearly 200 women remained trapped
in the building with no means of escape.

On the 8th floor workers tried bravely
to stop the fire,

but the flames were too quick
and the water pressure in the fire hoses failed them.

As the searing heat and smoke intensified,
the factory floor became an incinerator

and as bodies piled up
in front of the locked main exit,

those who still could raced for a fire escape
on the far western end of the building.

Fewer than 20 women managed to get out
before the rusted metal supports gave way

sending several workers plunging to their death

and cutting off the last means of escape
for all the others.

With a wall of fire advancing on them,
the terrified women moved to the open windows.

TESSA BANANI:
The girls behind us were screaming and crying.

Several of them, as the flames crept closer,
ran into the smoke

and we heard them scream
as the flames caught their clothes.

One little girl who worked
at the machine opposite me,

cried out in Italian, "Goodbye, goodbye."
--Tessa Banani

NARRATOR:
Outside on the street below,
a huge crowd had gathered.

The New York Fire Department had arrived
within minutes of the call,

rushing 35 vehicles to the scene

along with the most modern fire fighting
equipment in the country.

But even the tallest ladder could go no farther
than the 6th floor,

two full stories below the burning factory floors,

where tons of flame could already be seen
curling out of the windows.

CHRISTINE STANSELL:
The fire, of course, like any fire in Manhattan,

could be spotted from blocks and blocks around
because of the smoke,

so there were big crowds on the streets below
and the fire had gone on long enough

that people had also heard the word down
below the Lower East Side

and had come up to the Village waiting
to see what would happen.

Then it became apparent
in this heart-gripping moment

that no one could get out
except if they jumped.

NARRATOR:
At 5:05, a laborer named Dominick Cardiani,

pushing his wheel barrel down Green Street,
heard a muffled explosion

followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Glancing up, he saw what he thought
were dark bundles of clothes sailing

from an 8th floor window.

ROBERT A. CARO:
You know, you can hardly believe it
when you read about it.

I mean imagine, from the 8th, 9th,
and 10th floors of a building

overlooking Washington Square Park.

First, this great ton of flame leaps out, you know,
and passersby and some policemen said,

oh, it was just a momentary accident,

then all of a sudden, one passerby said something
that looked like an bale of old clothes

comes plummeting down from the 8th floor
and hits with this thud

that somehow seemed too loud
for a bale of clothes on the sidewalk.

And someone said they must be throwing,
and it was burning as it fell,

they must be throwing out
the burning bales of clothes.

And then other bodies started to come down.

People realized that there were young girls
who'd go out on the ledge

and the flames would be looming up behind them,
and they'd jump, of course to die.

Some would try to cling to the ledge
with their fingertips, but they couldn't.

You have plummeting down to the street scores
of burning dead bodies.

CHRISTINE STANSELL:
There was also an iron fence below,

so some of the young women when they jumped
were impaled on the iron fence.

And people who saw it said
that they never forgot it.

That it was a sight that burned itself
on the retina of the watchers.

NARRATOR:
William Shepherd, a reporter for the United Press

called the story as he watched
from a payphone across the street.

WILLIAM SHEPHERD:
I learned a new sound,

a more horrible sound
than description can picture.

It was the thud of a speeding,
living body on the stone sidewalk.

Thud. Dead. Thud. Dead. Thud. Dead. Thud. Dead.

There was plenty of chance to watch them
as they came down.

The height was 80 feet.

The first ten thuds, deads, shocked me.

I looked up, saw that there were scores of girls
at the windows,

the flames from the floor below
were beating in their faces.

Somehow I knew that they too must come down.

I even watched one girl falling, waving her arms,
trying to keep her body upright

until the very instant she struck the sidewalk.

Then came the thud and a silent,

unmoving pile of clothing and twisted broken limbs.
--William Shepherd

NARRATOR:
By now, dozens of women at a time

could be seen standing
at the 8th and 9th floor windows

all but engulfed by the inferno.

As those below watched in horror, groups of women,
three and four at a time,

grabbed each other by the hand,
closed their eyes, and plunged off the building.

"They hit the pavement just like rain,"

a stunned fire chief
named Edward Worth later testified.

Frances Perkins, a 31-year-old advocate
with the Consumers League stood

with her hand at her throat,
helpless to stop the unfolding tragedy.

FRANCES PERKINS:
The nets were broken.

The firemen kept shouting for them not to jump,
but they had no choice.

The flames were right behind them.

For by this time, the fire was far gone.
--Frances Perkins

NARRATOR:
By 5:15 the scene on the street was a bedlam

as thousands of workers poured out
of nearby factories

and pressed against the barricades.

Fire engine horses reared
at the strong smell of blood

while police tried,
without success, to control the crowd.

MALE:
The floods of water from the fireman's hose

that ran into the gutter were actually
stained red with blood.

I looked upon the heap of dead bodies
and I remembered these girls
were shirt waist makers.

I remembered their great strike of last year
in which these same girls had demanded

more sanitary conditions
and more safety precautions in these shops.

These dead bodies were the answer.