“It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history. A dropped match on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sparked a fire that killed over a hundred innocent people trapped inside. The private industry of the American factory would never be the same.”-PBS.org
Many men and women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were immigrants who came to America seeking the “American Dream”. They wanted to make a life for themselves and their families, but many of them were unable to do so because of the horrible working conditions of the factory. This fire could have been prevented if only the factory owners and the people who were supposed to make sure that everything was up to date did their job correctly. Fortuity …show more content…
One of the major problems in the factory was the lack of communication. The people from different floors were unable to connect with each other because “The way the Triangle’s phone system was rigged, all calls had to go through the switchboard. A message from the eight to nine had to be connected by the switchboard operator on the tenth floor and she had simply vanished” (Drehle 121). When the workers tried to put out the fire they had trouble with the water hoses no water came out. In David Von Drehle’s book Triangle The Fire that Changed America he describes the fire and he said the manager of the factory was shouting “Where is the water? Where is the water?” the worker who was trying to get it to work yelled back “There’s no pressure, nothing coming” (122). The way that the doors were put on caused even more chaos. There were very few exits and the ones that weren’t consumed by the fire were full of people trying to escape. The doors that led to the stairwell opened inward and there was too many people in the stairway so when people tried to open the door it just simply wouldn’t open enough for them to get
Many men and women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were immigrants who came to America seeking the “American Dream”. They wanted to make a life for themselves and their families, but many of them were unable to do so because of the horrible working conditions of the factory. This fire could have been prevented if only the factory owners and the people who were supposed to make sure that everything was up to date did their job correctly. Fortuity …show more content…
One of the major problems in the factory was the lack of communication. The people from different floors were unable to connect with each other because “The way the Triangle’s phone system was rigged, all calls had to go through the switchboard. A message from the eight to nine had to be connected by the switchboard operator on the tenth floor and she had simply vanished” (Drehle 121). When the workers tried to put out the fire they had trouble with the water hoses no water came out. In David Von Drehle’s book Triangle The Fire that Changed America he describes the fire and he said the manager of the factory was shouting “Where is the water? Where is the water?” the worker who was trying to get it to work yelled back “There’s no pressure, nothing coming” (122). The way that the doors were put on caused even more chaos. There were very few exits and the ones that weren’t consumed by the fire were full of people trying to escape. The doors that led to the stairwell opened inward and there was too many people in the stairway so when people tried to open the door it just simply wouldn’t open enough for them to get