NEW YORK DISASTER

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10197, 27 March 1911, Page 5

NEW YORK DISASTER

A TERRIFIC CONFLAGRATION

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY GIRLS PERISH.

DESPERATE ATTEMPTS AT RESCUE.

(Received This Morning, 12.15 o'clock.)

NEW YORK, March 26. One hundred and fifty persons, chiefly girls, lost their lives by a terrific conflagration in the Triangle Shirt Waist Company's promises in Washington Place. Tho fire started on the eighth floor. Girls, panic-stricken, jumped to the pavement. Sixty wore crashed by the fall. Fifty bodies were found o.i the ninth floor, where the flames overt <al: the occupants. The building was not provide*! wiih a single outside fire-escape. The crowds watched the girls leap, but were unable to render any aid. The partners in the firm (Harris and Blanck) escaped across the roofs, rescuing their two daughters and a governess.

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.

A number of falling girls crashed through the windows set in the pavement into the cellars beneath. The crowd of thousands watched a man and woman emerge from the ninth storey window. The man kissed the woman, flung her out at a life net, and then leaped himself. Both were killed. Six girls climbed along electric wires. The strands parted and all -were killed. The brigade extinguished the flames within ah hour. The walls of the building are intact. The students of the adjoining Law Department of the New York University rescued forty girls across the roofs of neighbouring houses. The elevator men stuck to their post, and rescued scores. It is estimated there were five, hundred occupants ef the building.