History Of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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

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

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