On March 25, 1911 at 4:45pm a fire started on the 8th floor. The fire doesn’t have an official cause but most speculate it was either a cigarette butt thrown in a waste basket or possibly an electrical short. The fire spread very quickly due to the paper and fabric that we piled in the factory. While some employees were trying to put the fire out with buckets of water other employees tried to make calls to the 9th and 10th floors. Attempts were made to use fire hoses that were located in the factory but when they went to turn the water on nothing came out.
Shoaib Sheikh HIST 1312, Zimmer 9/29/2015 "Preventable Fires" A little over a hundred years ago, America suffered one of the most deadliest industrial accidents in the country's history. On March 25th, 1911, a fire ignited by a cigarette began on the eight floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The fire spread to the entire building and eventually resulted in the death of 146 shirtwaist workers (mostly girls.) This tragedy exposed the horrible conditions in which these workers were forced to work and the disregard of the safety of the workers by the factory owners.
Through out the history of the United States, a number of incidents and disasters have occurred to influence safety and protection. In the aftermath of these events, valuable lessons are learned and steps are taken to ensure nothing like that happens again. One such incident is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the most influential and horrifying incidents in United States history. The fact that both the National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) and National Safety Council (NSC) trace their history back to this incident speaks to that. Sadly, the tragic events that unfolded during the Triangle fire were not surprising.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a devastating fire that killed 146 girls in New York City (Leap for Life, Leap for Death). At this time, citizens of New York were furious and demanded that the government do something to prevent future tragedies. The government responded and the reforms that the government made, it changed the future of New York industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, one of history’s deadliest fires, came as a result of outrageously unsafe working conditions, led to a high death toll and injury total, but, ultimately resulted in reforms that helped safeguard future factory workers.
In 1902, the Triangle Factory was burned twice and Blanck’s and Harris’s other company, Diamond Waist, was scorched twice; once in 1907 and in 1910 (1 “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire” 3). Those fires were purposely started by them before work hours to collect large fire-insurance policies (3). That was a common act in the early 20th century (3). Though they didn’t cause the fire in 1911, it contributed to the disaster, because Blanck and Harris refused to install a sprinkler system and other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again (3). This would only add to the severity of the upcoming event.
Also having fusible doors and inflammable materials is important, although they might be more expensive the safety of a human is more valuable than money. Towards the end of the book Esposito proposes the reader with advice to help prevent such disaster to happen again. Some of his tips to avoid being caught in a public building on fire are to look for exits as soon as you enter the place. In addition, he to reacting if a fire alarm goes of or the smell of smoke becomes obvious.
In today’s society, building regulations have made the buildings themselves better equipped for the possibility of a fire. Jonathan Fowler, a level three local firefighter volunteer in Cave City, Arkansas for the past nine years, said the fire of 1911 burned the whole building in a total of eighteen minutes. As a result, each room in a standard government building can help contain a fire for fifteen minutes and keep the flames from spreading further and causing even more destruction. Another example of a positive result from the fire is within two years of the tragedy, more than thirty laws had been passed to help prevent anything tragic that can be averted from happening again (Wignot). Another result of the fire was it made Americans realize that those women who burned were technically citizens of the United States of America, but because they were immigrants, they were discriminated against and not treated fairly (Cornell).
In this first assignment, I will try to demonstrate several areas where the trend of hiring greater educated firefighters did affected not only our training division but also the relationship between generations within our composite department. In the last ten years, our department took the approach that hiring educated firefighters from a recognize Fire School Academy would possibly be a better strategies for our small department. I for myself believe in education in the fire service, if not, why would I have registered in this program. In reality, this is where our department started to struggle. First, the minimum requirement to become a volunteer firefighter with our Department is Level 1 under NFPA-1001.
Orr was a fire captain in the Glendale Fire Department, and, throughout his career, he set hundreds of fires throughout California. His reign of terror lasted from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, and it caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage to homes and businesses. As a result of Orr’s actions, California firefighters had to adopt new tactics to detect and combat arson. Firefighters began to focus more on arson-specific training, such as recognizing patterns of arson, utilizing specific tools to investigate arson, and utilizing arson dogs to help detect accelerants. In addition, police and fire departments began to cooperate more closely to investigate arson crimes.
A fire started in a rag bin on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building in Manhattan, New York on Saturday, March 25, 1911. There were six hundred people working in the factory at the time of the fire, and almost all of them were poor, immigrant, teenage women. A total of one hundred forty-five people died as a result of the unsafe building: the fire extinguishers had hoses that were rusted shut, the doors at the bottom of the stairwell were locked, the stairwell was not fireproof, and the workers panicked and had no idea what to do because there had never been any fire drills. Fire trucks responded quickly, but their equipment was inadequate: their ladders were too short and their safety nets ripped easily. The fire was
Norwood and Gray argue that, “We, the American fire service, are behind in some aspects of our tactics and understanding of fire behavior”(59). Here I agree with Norwood and Gray because they are many examples of what needs to be changed. If you look at other fire services around the
The Fire That Sparked Change The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory Fire of March 25, 1911 is a day that will forever stand out in the heart of communities, families, American factory workers and employees alike. Not only did it needlessly take the lives of 144 people, mostly young women, ages 16-23, and a few men, but it called into light the dangers of poorly constructed buildings, overcrowded work spaces, and dangerous work environments. Historians, teachers, and journalists have poured over trial transcripts, newspaper articles, commission reports, and first hand accounts from either victims or analysis of what was left behind, on that fateful day knowing full well the far reaching grasp of that event. Whether first hand accounts as told by the “Commission” in the “Preliminary Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission” (1912), recounts of information supplied to the newspapers as in the story published by the New York Times (1911), titled “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire, stories that covered how journalists reported on the story, Elizabeth V Burt’s (2005) “Working Women and the Triangle Fire: Press Coverage of a Tragedy or Doug Linder’s “The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial” each account has not only helped to bring reality to the existence and subsequent deaths of each and everyone of those individuals who lost their lives that fateful day, but also to the need and responsibility for the community and government alike to ensure for safer workplace regulations and stronger building codes.
A person centred care approach ‘considers the needs of a person as a whole, this including their physical, social and psychological needs’. This means that a person is seen as an individual and the care that they will receive is ‘not to or for them but in partnership with them’. (The Open University, 2014, p. 90). Person centred care, allows the individual and their families to be involved in the care that they are receiving. Person centred care services should ‘offer flexibility and should be promoting independence’ and allowing that person to have an input in any decisions being made.
Escape fire is defined as a fire intentionally set to provide protection against a larger uncontrolled fire (Heineman & Fromke, 2012). This documentary maintains that in order to
A firefighter needs to have a variety of skills such as evacuate fire structures and treat victims, suppress and extinguish fires with hoses pumps and additional apparatus’. Not everything a firefighter accomplishes involves fighting fires, and saving people, they also act as role models for the younger generation, and the community. A firefighter may have to participate and give a lesson in
