A Terrible Fire

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 262, 27 March 1911, Page 5

A Terrible Fire

15c P2OPLE BURNED OR KILLED. HARROWING SCENES. PANIC-STRICKEN GIRLS. JUMP FOR LIFE—AND ARE DASHED TO PIECES. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright Received 27, 12.15 a.m. New York, March 26. A hundred and fifty persons, mostly girls, were burned to death or killed in a terrific conflagration at the Triangle Shirt and Waist Company's premises in Washington place. The fire started on the eighth floor. The girls, panic-stricken, jumped to the pavement. Sixty were crushed by the fall. Fifty, bodies were found on the ninth floor, where the flames overtook the occupants. A crowd watched the girls leap, but were unable to aid them. The partners of the firm, Harris and Blanch, escaped across roofs, after rescuing their two daughters and a governess. A "number of falling girls crashed through the .windows inset in the pavement into the cellars beneath. The crowd, numbering thousands, watched a man and woman emerge from a. ninth storey window. The man kissed the woman, and then flung her out at the life net, and leaped himself. Both were killed. Six girls climbed along the electric wires. The strands parted. All were killed. The students in the adjoining law department of the New York University, rescued forty across the roofs of neighboring houses. The elevator men stuck to their posts and rescued scores.

It is estimated there were five hundred occupants of the building. The brigade extinguished the flames within an hour, The walls of the building are intact.

The building was not provided with a single outside fire escape.