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History Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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Sara Zarr once said, “When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.” Zarr hit right on the mark when she said this because, if an event does not pertain to them, people tend to forget it. One event that needs to be remembered, and stay in everyone’s memories, is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Tens of thousands of immigrants flocked to American, looking for a better life. Sadly, some 100 of those immigrants found death instead of wealth. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught on fire, causing 146 women and girl to die; most of which were immigrants. The events before the fire, the tragic disaster, the laws that came about because of the fire, and another fire that occured after the factory disaster led to a …show more content…

According to the History.com Staff (2009), Blanck and Harris had purposely burned down two of their previous buildings to collect the larger amount of money from the fire-insurance policies they had bought. Even though Blanck and Harris did not burn down the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, they still played a huge part in the fire. Since they burned down their own building so they could gain money, Blanck and Harris did not have any precautions that would help prevent a fire from happening. However, they did not have to have any precautions because of the laws about building safety at that time. According to User (n.d.), the laws stated that building did not need to have a sprinkler system and that fire drills were not mandatory; so Blanck and Harris did not do anything to prepare for any sort of disaster that could happen. Along with having little to no safety precautions put into place, the Asch building was in terrible condition. “Company Fire” (n.d.) stated the …show more content…

Regardless of how the fire started, due to the piles of fabric all over the factory, the fire spread quickly. According to User (n.d.), the New York Law stated that buildings under 150 feet were not required to have stone or concrete floors and metal trim/window frames; since the Asch building was 135 feet, it did not have metal trim/window frames and a stone or concrete floors. Instead, the Asch building was constructed out of wood surfaces. If it would have had non-wood surfaces, the fire might not have been able to spread as quickly or done as much damage. All of the workers panicked as they tried to find a way out. Blanck and Harris just so happened to be on the top floor and were able to withdraw themselves from the building and run onto the roof with the rest of the workers on the top floor. As reported by Sinyai (2011), after the people from the top floor got onto the roof, NYU students from the next building over helped them to escape the fire. Only one worker from the top floor was unable to flee to the roof. This one worker ended up jumping from a window so as to not be burned to death. The rest of the workers on the lower floor weren’t so lucky. The History.com Staff (2009) said this about the

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Eventually, the employees realized they would not win the battle, and returned to work. The founders of this company were selfish in their actions, only stopping to help it’s employees when they started to lack personal gain. After going back to work, a cigarette, still lit, was dropped onto the workroom floor of the 8th floor. The loose fabric and wicker baskets quickly wicked this up, creating a deadly fire. The stairwell was locked, and no one had the key to open

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First, a lot of workers lost their lives. According to the book Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix, 146 people had died in the fire. Foreign girls worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. According to source 1, it says Italian, Russian, Hungarian, and German girls worked and died.

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The investigation involved thousands of factories across New York and eventually uncovered a serious need for reform. “They dealt with specific aspects of the Triangle fire, providing more stringent requirements for fire escapes and fire drills and stronger regulations against locked doors, blocked exits and aisles and the presence of combustible material (Argersinger p32).” The reform

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Another result of the fire was the creation of the American Society of Safety Engineers. Which was Designed for all buildings to fall under the code to make them safer? The American Society of Safety Engineers did just that, and there has not been any other building tragedy fire not caused by arson as severe as the shirtwaist fire. I will now like to return to the original question.

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There were two stairways down to the street, although one was locked from the outside in order to avoid stealing from the factory and the other single opened inward. Another issue was that the fire escape was so thin that meant it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even during the best of situations and in this case it wasn’t the best of circumstances. The day of the fire it was a Saturday afternoon on March 25th. The day of the fire there were 600 workers at the factory when it started by a rag bin. The manager on duty tried to use the fire hose to destroy it, but failed, as the hose was decayed and its valve was tarnished to

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory The Progressive Era was a difficult time for workers. It was a time where many workers were getting hurt or killed on the job, paid low wages, had little to no safety requirements and worked long hours. It was even more difficult because it seemed as owners never really cared about their workers or their safety. All of that changed after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that showed how bad the working conditions and safety of workers was.

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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.

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Because of the fire, many new safety regulations have been issued. “Every building has to have a enforced fire drill and fire alarms” to keep the workers safe (The Labor Law). In 1970, the government created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to make sure that the new safety regulations were being enforced. The girls in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire all died a horrific

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Outside, firefighters' ladders were too short to reach the top floors and ineffective safety nets ripped like paper. ”(What went wrong) A Lot more lives would have been able to be saved but Because of the bad Fire hazards Nearly anybody lived. For workers to have the rights they need they also need good fire hazards. Blanck and harris were so worried about money that they didn't even care if there employees were safe or

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The building was highly flammable and not very safe for people to be in. If there was fire there which nobody thought there was going to be one they could not stop the fire because the fire hose was not connected to the water. This is a little backstory on when Rose was little. She was born on March 27th 1893 in a small town north of vienna.

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The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire caught the imagination of Progressives and validated their arguments about the American economy. The factory fire broke out in late March and claimed the lives of over one hundred workers. This factory was what seemed like a normal factory in New York City on the outside, but had dangerous and unsanitary working conditions on the inside that remained unknown until the fire broke out. This calamity would help to bring new laws and regulations on factory conditions and rights for their workers.

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The New York Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is infamous as one of the deadliest industrial disasters in United States history. However, it is was a turning point for American labor. The public outrage that erupted following the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was the primary force behind the expansion of labor laws in the United States of America. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire led to the expansion of labor laws because of its conditions.

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“When the fire began to rush on our floor we wanted to jump out of the window at first but somehow I kept my head while the others were fighting in the dark from the smoke. I kept saying to myself what all the greenhorns used to say, that in America they don't allow one to burn.” Rose Indursky was one of 275 women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that went up in flames on March 25th, 1911. One hundred and forty-six people died. The majority of deaths were on the ninth floor.

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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

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The Triangle Fire Tragedy The fire in the Triangle Waist Company was the “deadliest workplace tragedy in the history of New York City” (Argersinger, p.16). Immigrant young women, some of whom did not speak English, were employees in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to support their families despite the poor wages and the dangerous work conditions. In this period, progressive movements were occurring in order to reduce the impacts of the difficult conditions brought by industrialization, balance the wealth between the rich and poor, and make the workplace more efficient. After watching how several garment workers, mostly women, reach their deaths, America was never the same in many ways, affecting the development of the Progressive Era and

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