The Triangle Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

stairs two steps at a time.
    Between the fifth and sixth floors he found his way blocked by the first terrified girls making the winding descent from the Triangle shop. In the narrow staircase he had to flatten himself against the wall to let the girls squeeze by.
    Between the seventh and eighth floors he almost fell over a girl who had fainted. Behind her the blocked line had come to a stop, the screaming had increased. He raised her to her feet, held her for a moment against the wall, calming her, and started her once again down the stairs.
    At the eighth floor, he remembers that the flames were within 8 feet of the stairwell. “I saw two girls at a window on the Washington Place side shouting for help and waving their hands hysterically. A machinist—his name was Brown—helped me get the girls away from the window. We sent them down the stairs.”
    The heat was unbearable. “It backed us to the staircase,” Meehan says.
    Together with the machinist, he retreated down the spiral staircase. At the sixth floor, the policeman heard frantic pounding on the other side of the door facing the landing. He tried to open the door but found it was locked. He was certain now that the fire was also in progress on this floor.
    “I braced myself with my back against the door and my feet on the nearest step of the stairs. I pushed with all my strength. When the door finally burst inward, I saw there was no smoke, no fire. But the place was full of frightened women. They were screaming and clawing. Some were at the windows threatening to jump.”
    These were Triangle employees who had fled down the rear fire escape. At the sixth floor, one of them had pried the shutters open, smashed the window and climbed back into the building. Others followed. Inside, they found themselves trapped behind a locked door and panicked.
    As he stumbled back into the street, Meehan saw that the first fire engines and police patrol wagons were arriving. Dr. Winterbottom, in the meantime, had reached Washington Place. For a moment he remained immobilized by the horror. Then he rushed into a store, found a telephone, and shouted at the operator, “For God’s sake, send ambulances!”
    The first policemen on the scene were from the nearby Mercer Street Station House of the 8th Precinct. Among them were some who had used their clubs against the Triangle girls a year earlier during the shirtwaist makers’ strike.
    First to arrive was Captain Dominick Henry, a man inured to suffering by years of police work in a tough, two-fisted era. But he stopped short at his first view of the Asch building. “I saw a scene I hope I never see again. Dozens of girls were hanging from the ledges. Others, their dresses on fire, were leaping from the windows.”
    From distant streets came piercing screams of fire whistles, the nervous clang of fire bells. Suddenly, they were sounding from all directions.
    In the street, men cupped their hands to their mouths, shouting, “Don’t jump! Here they come!” Then they waved their arms frantically.
    Patrolman Meehan also shouted. He saw a couple standing in the frame of a ninth-floor window. They moved out onto the narrow ledge. “I could see the fire right behind them. I hollered, ‘Go over!’”
    But nine floors above the street the margin of choice was as narrow as the window ledge. The flames reached out and touched the woman’s long tresses. The two plunged together.
    In the street, watchers recovering from their first shock had sprung into action. Two young men came charging down Greene Street in a wagon, whipping their horses onto the sidewalk and shouting all the time, “Don’t jump!” They leaped from the wagon seat, tore the blankets from their two horses, and shouted for others to help grip them. Other teamsters also stripped blankets, grabbed tarpaulins to improvise nets.
    But the bodies hit with an impact that tore the blankets from their hands. Bodies and blankets went smashing through the glass deadlights set