Disasters, calamities, tragedies, or catastrophes—no matter whatwe call them, these events happen on a regular basis, and morerecent occurrences tend to cancel out memories of the older ones.However, the March 25, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City has not beenforgotten, as its 100-year anniversary last spring promptedpublic media to recall the horrific event. Perhaps it was becausemany of the deaths resembled those of the disaster on Sept. 11,2001, when trapped victims jumped or fell to their fate rather thanperish in the flames.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were, by far, theworse of the two disasters, resulting in far more deaths and fargreater destruction. It was the Triangle Factory fire, however,that led to the greatest changes of the early 20th century aspoliticians began to look more closely at the sweatshops and childlabor that were rampant across the nation. Ultimately, however,very little has changed. Eighty years later, on Sept. 3, 1991, 25people were burned to death and 49 injured in a Hamlet, N.C.chicken processing plant where, as in the Triangle fire, exits wereeither locked or blocked.

It was not until after the Nov. 28, 1942 fire at the CocoanutGrove nightclub in Boston that fire safety doors became arequirement in public places, opening to the outside so thatvictims would not be trapped and trampled. The fire codes of theNational Fire Protection Association (NFPA) would seem to besufficient, yet hardly a year passes without some fire-relatedtragedy involving locked or barricaded doors, a deadly impedimentoften initiated by management to prevent wrongful entry or keepingpatrons from exiting without paying a bill. Blocked doors were afactor in the Southgate, Ky. Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Mayof 1977 that killed some 160 patrons and injured many more. Then,on Feb. 20, 2003, 100 people died after a lack of exterior doorsprevented their escape from a fire at Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I.

Can Common Sense Be Legislated?

Is a safe environment or workplace possible? Perhaps, suggests Caroline McDonald in herDec. 13, 2010 article in National Underwriter titled,“OSHA Ineffective in Preventing Some Types of Worker Injuries …”Citing a Workers' Compensation Research Institute report preparedby Michael Silverstein, assistant director for industrial safetyand health in the Washington State Department of Labor andIndustries, McDonald reported that since passage of theOccupational Safety & Health Act in 1970, workplace injuriesand illnesses have decreased, from 11 per 100 full-time employeesin 1972 to only 4 per 100 in 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau ofLabor Statistics. But is that because of greater safety andenforcement? For one thing, the workplace has changed; there arefewer factories and more “desk jobs” in the 21st century than therewere in the 1970s. Dangerous jobs have moved overseas, althoughconstruction and mining jobs still remainhazardous.

Silverstein cited the continuing high death rate in constructionsite trench cave-ins and an even higher death rate amongforeign-born workers, who often work in temporary jobs with littleor no safety training as an example. He noted that “most workplacesare not fully compliant with OSHA standards. About 65 percent ofOSHA inspections result in at least one violation being cited.”Many politicians nevertheless oppose greater funding for OSHAinspections, and OSHA is often a political target.

Very Little Compensation in 1911

In the 1911 Triangle fire, New York had no workers' compensation law.It was not until 1913 that the state finally passed such a law,which was based largely on the fact that in the Triangle firevictims and their families had little recourse against the owners.An average of $75 was paid to each victim, but the fire stirredrecognition of the dangers in the city sweatshops. By 1911, agrowing number of states were passing workers' compensation laws,although many were just as quickly declared unconstitutional byconservative state courts.

A “safe” public place is often a misleading concept. Atlanta'sWinecoff Hotel was considered fireproof when 119 people died in aDec. 7, 1946 fire, now believed to have been set by a disgruntledgambler. Yet of 10 key factors that made the Winecoff fireespecially fatal, nearly every one was repeated in the constructionof the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Although the MGM structure metcounty codes, a Nov. 21, 1980 fire killed 85 people and injuredmore than 700. One key factor in both was that hotel personnel hadlittle or no training about what to do in the event of a fire. Whenthe fire department entered the lobby of the MGM Grand thatmorning, gamblers were still playing the slots in the smoke-filledgame rooms.

Fire experts, risk managers, and insurers know the factors thatcan make some locations more toxic than others. In the Trianglefire, the bits of thread and cloth scattered on the floor burstinto flames. In the Feb. 10, 2008 Imperial Sugar Co. plantexplosion in Ga. that killed 14 and injured many more, the culpritwas sugar dust.

Grain elevators are also producers of explosive dusts, andchemical plants are notorious sources of fatal explosions,including the multi-fatality Atlas Powder Plant (a DuPont facility)explosion in Lake Hopatcong, N.J. in December of 1920, or the Feb.7, 2010, Kleen Energy Systems power station explosion in Conn. andthe March 26, 2011, Louisville, Ky. chemical plant explosion.Industrial fires, fatalities, and explosions seem almostcommonplace, sometimes not becoming more than a local news event.

Yet after the March 2011 Tokyo Electric nuclear plant meltdownand explosions, worldwide attention was drawn to the hazards ofliving in a modern society. Strict rules and guidelines help, butonly if they are carefully obeyed and officially monitored by aresponsible governmental agency.

The Triangle Fire Tragedy

Stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire are legends.I first heard of the event while reading Leon Uris's 1976 novelTrinity, in which Uris carefully described the event, butchanged its location to Northern Ireland. Tales of a ghostly figureleading Triangle girls to the ninth story window to jump add to thetragic horror of the conflagration.

The fire occurred on a Saturday at about 4:45 p.m. when the 575workers in the factory were finishing a seven-hour overtime shift.Huge piles of clippings, cloth, and thread were stacked across theeighth, ninth, and 10th floors when someone carelessly discarded acigarette. Noticing the flames, a few workers tried to douse themwith buckets of water, but there were no fire hoses on standpipesor sprinklers in the ten-story “fireproof” building. There were 225employees on the floor where the fire occurred.

“Fifty cutters immediately headed down the Greene Streetstairway upon hearing the first shouts of 'Fire!'” reported PaulHashagen, a retired FDNY firefighter, in the March 2011 issue ofFirehouse Magazine, a publication for fire services. Mostof the women pressed toward the narrow exit on the Washington Placeside and found the door locked. After several frantic moments, aman broke the lock and the women squeezed through and descended insingle file until the lead girl fainted, blocking the stairs.Behind her on the eighth floor, heat, smoke and flame pressed downon the trapped workers. Several panic-stricken young women who werecut off and unable to reach the small elevator or the crowdedstairs were driven to the windows.

“Above their heads,” Hashagen continued, “sheets of flamespulsed out the eighth floor windows and into the open windows onthe ninth and tenth floors, igniting the extremely flammablefabrics and cuttings on each floor. The first warning of fire the300 workers on the ninth floor had was the wave of fire suddenlypouring over their heads. A mad scramble ensued as each one triedto squeeze through the 20-inch opening that led to the GreeneStreet stairway. Others frantically made their way to a singlesmall fire escape that was soon overcrowded.”

In a New York Times report on March 26, 1911, it wasnoted that “Samuel Bernstein, the waist factory's foreman, and MaxRothberg, his first assistant, were standing together on the eighthfloor when the screams of girls attracted their attention to thesoutheast corner of the large room. They rang for the elevators,which were on the south side of the building, and Rothbergtelephoned the fire department and the police department.” On thestreet, a passerby saw the smoke and pulled the corner fire alarmbox, #289. Within minutes, Engine 72 was on its way.

Hashagen reports that Engine 72 was a 1909 Knox high-pressurehose wagon, the city's first motorized apparatus. The next arrivingengines were horse-drawn. Battalion Chief Edward Worth tookcommand, commenting, “As I turned the corner at Fourth and Green, Isaw that the fire was already in possession of the eighth floor.Nobody showed at the windows of that floor. From the ninth floor,people were jumping.” More engines arrived as multiple alarms weretriggered. The firemen tried to keep the women from jumping, butwere unsuccessful. The “life nets” being used to catch jumpers wereineffective because of the height from which the women werejumping.

Across the street on the 10th floor of another building, 50 lawstudents were attending a lecture by a former New Jerseysheriff-turned-law professor. After spotting the flames, thelecturing sheriff ordered his students up to the roof. There, theyfound two ladders that had been left by painters, and although thetwo buildings were 15 feet apart, the students were able to lowerladders to the women trapped below, as several students climbeddown and rescued some of those on the floors affected by thefire.

The New York Times reported that “men, panic-stricken,fought with the women to get to the ladder, but Kremmer (one of thestudents) shoved them away and let the women out of the danger zonefirst. More than 100 women and 20 men escaped this way. Anotherhundred reached the building north of the burning one, whose roofwas only five feet higher and could be reached without a ladder.How many reached the streets through the stairways nobody knew, asthey were foreigners who spoke little English and fled for theirhomes in the lower east side as soon as they gained the sidewalk.”It was not until the blaze was out and bodies were moved to themorgue that the true horror of the fire was realized.

The company, according to the New York Times, was ownedby the partnership of Max Harris and Isaac Blanck, both of whomescaped the fire. Discussion immediately followed regardingpossible charges against New York's then-mayor William Jay Gaynor,but instead the fire led to the creation of the Ladies Waist &Dressmakers Union, which was a forerunner of International LadiesGarment Workers Union. Also, founded in 1911 was the FactoryInvestigation Committee headed by Alfred E. Smith and Robert F.Wagner, both of whom would later become prominent New Yorkpoliticians. The committee also included notables such as FrancesPerkins, Secretary of Labor in the Franklin Rooseveltadministration.

In the frantic sweatshop environment of the early 20th century,a tragedy such as the Triangle fire was inevitable. The World TradeCenter disaster was far less so. Yet unless those in a position torecognize risk and take the necessary—and often expensive—steps toavoid or reduce hazards, similar deadly catastrophes are bound torecur.