The Triangle Fire Read Online Free PDF

into the sidewalk over the cellar vault of the Asch building.
    Daniel Charnin, a youngster driving a Wanamaker wagon, jumped down and ran to help the men holding the blankets. “They hollered at me and kicked me. They shouted, ‘Get out of here, kid! You want to get killed?’”
    One of the first ambulances to arrive was in the charge of Dr. D. E. Keefe of St. Vincent’s Hospital. It headed straight for the building. “One woman fell so close to the ambulance that I thought if we drove it up to the curb it would be possible for some persons to strike the top of the ambulance and so break their falls.”
    The pump engine of Company 18, drawn by three sturdy horses, came dashing into Washington Place at about the same time. It was the first of thirty-five pieces of fire-fighting apparatus summoned to the scene. These included the Fire Department’s first motorized units, ultimately to replace the horses but in 1911 still experimental.
    Another major innovation being made by the Fire Department was the creation of high-water-pressure areas. The Asch building was located in one of the first of these. In such an area a system of water-main cutoffs made it possible to build up pressure at selected hydrants. At Triangle, the Gansevoort Street pumping station raised the pressure to 200 pounds. The most modern means of fighting fires were available at the northwest corner of Washington Place and Greene Street.
    A rookie fireman named Frank Rubino rode the Company 18 pump engine, and he remembers that “we came tearing down Washington Square East and made the turn into Washington Place. The first thing I saw was a man’s body come crashing down through the sidewalk shed of the school building. We kept going. We turned into Greene Street and began to stretch in our hoses. The bodies were hitting all around us.”
    When the bodies didn’t go through the deadlights, they piled up on the sidewalk, some of them burning so that firemen had to turn their hoses on them. According to Company 18’s Captain Howard Ruch the hoses were soon buried by the bodies and “we had to lift them off before we could get to work.”
    Captain Ruch ordered his men to spread the life nets. But no sooner was the first one opened than three bodies hit it at once. The men, their arms looped to the net, held fast.
    “The force was so great it took the men off their feet,” Captain Ruch said. “Trying to hold the nets, the men turned somersaults and some of them were catapulted right onto the net. The men’s hands were bleeding, the nets were torn and some caught fire.”
    Later, the Captain calculated that the force of each falling body when it struck the net was about 11,000 pounds.
    “Life nets?” asked Battalion Chief Edward J. Worth. “What good were life nets? The little ones went through life nets, pavement, and all. I thought they would come down one at a time. I didn’t know they would come down with arms entwined—three and even four together.” There was one who seemed to have survived the jump. “I lifted her out and said, ‘Now go right across the street.’ She walked ten feet—and dropped. She died in one minute.”
    The first hook and ladder—Company 20—came up Mercer Street so fast, says Rubino, “that it almost didn’t make the turn into Washington Place.”
    The firemen were having trouble with their horses. They weren’t trained for the blood and the sound of the falling bodies. They kept rearing on their hind legs, their eyes rolling. Some men pulled the hitching pins and the horses broke loose, whinnying. Others grabbed the reins and led them away.
    The crowd began to shout: “Raise the ladders!”
    Company 20 had the tallest ladder in the Fire Department. It swung into position, and a team of men began to crank its lifting gears. A hush fell over the crowd.
    The ladder continued to rise. One girl on the ninth floor ledge slowly waved a handkerchief as the ladder crept toward her.
    Then the men stopped cranking. The