Accident → Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (03/25/1911)

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died in the fire or jumped to their deaths. Somebody "tosses a match or cigarette butt into one of these bins," Von Drehle says. "It goes off like a firebomb." The approximately 125 workers on the eighth floor "barely escaped with their lives," Von Drehle says. A quick telephone call alerted workers on the tenth floor, and they too were able to make their way out of the burning building. But for several critical minutes during the commotion, no one notified the 250 workers on the ninth floor, where most of the the employees and sewing machines were located. At 4:45 p.m., a guard routinely locked one of the two exit doors on the ninth floor, something the company did every day at closing time, to discourage theft. It was then that the workers on the ninth floor first learned about the fire from the smoke and flames. Some escaped through the other, unlocked door. Others used a fire escape. Still others braved the elevators. "But eventually there was just the locked door. The other exit was blocked by fire, the elevators couldn't run, the fire escape had collapsed... and there were two horrible choices left: to jump out the windows or to die in the fire," Von Drehle says. Fifty-four people died by jumping and the rest died in the fire. The ladders only reached to between the sixth and seventh floors. Water from the hoses only reached to the seventh floor. The nets and blankets that the firefighters spread to catch the jumping workers tore and the people crashed through to die on the street.