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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in US history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and 23 men〔("Sweatshop Tragedy Ignites Fight for Workplace Safety" ) on the American Postal Workers Union website〕 – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged 16 to 23;〔("Triangle Shirtwaist Fire" ). ''Jewish Women: An Historical Encyclopedia'' on Jewish Women's Archive〕〔Stacy, Greg. ("Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Marks a Sad Centennial" ). NPR.org via ''Online Journal'' (March 24, 2011)〕〔Diner, Hasia R. ("Lecture: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the Shared Italian-Jewish History of New York" ) ''Italian-American Magazine'' (March 16, 2011)〕 of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was Providenza Panno at 43, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and "Sara" Rosaria Maltese. The factory was located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch Building, at 23–29 Washington Place in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, now known as the Brown Building and part of New York University. Because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits – a then-common practice to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft〔 – many of the workers could not escape and jumped from the high windows. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers. The building has been designated a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. ==Fire== The Triangle Waist Company factory occupied the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. Under the ownership of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the factory produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists." The factory normally employed about 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women, who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays,〔von Drehle, p. 105〕 earning for their 52 hours of work between $7 and $12 a week,〔 the 2014 equivalent of $166 to $285 a week, or $3.20 to $5.50 per hour.〔(CPI Inflation Calculator ) United States Bureau of Labor Statistics〕 As the workday was ending on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire flared up at approximately 4:40 PM in a scrap bin under one of the cutter's tables at the northeast corner of the eighth floor.〔von Drehle, p. 118.〕 The first fire alarm was sent at 4:45 PM by a passerby on Washington Place who saw smoke coming from the eighth floor.〔Stein, p. 224〕 Both owners of the factory were in attendance and had invited their children to the factory on that afternoon.〔 The Fire Marshal concluded that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished match or cigarette butt in the scrap bin, which held two months' worth of accumulated cuttings by the time of the fire.〔Stein p.33〕 Beneath the table in the wooden bin were hundreds of pounds of scraps which were left over from the several thousand shirtwaists that had been cut at that table. The scraps piled up from the last time the bin was emptied, coupled with the hanging fabrics that surrounded it; the steel trim was the only thing that was not highly flammable.〔von Drehle, p.118〕 Although smoking was banned in the factory, cutters were known to sneak cigarettes, exhaling the smoke through their lapels to avoid detection.〔von Drehle, 119〕 A ''New York Times'' article suggested that the fire may have been started by the engines running the sewing machines, while ''The Insurance Monitor'', a leading industry journal, suggested that the epidemic of fires among shirtwaist manufacturers was "fairly saturated with moral hazard."〔von Drehle, p. 163〕 A bookkeeper on the eighth floor was able to warn employees on the tenth floor via telephone, but there was no audible alarm and no way to contact staff on the ninth floor.〔von Drehle, 131〕 According to survivor Yetta Lubitz, the first warning of the fire on the ninth floor arrived at the same time as the fire itself.〔von Drehle, 141–2〕 Although the floor had a number of exits, including two freight elevators, a fire escape, and stairways down to Greene Street and Washington Place, flames prevented workers from descending the Greene Street stairway, and the door to the Washington Place stairway was locked to prevent theft by the workers; the locked doors allowed managers to check the women's purses.〔Lange, Brenda. ''The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire'', Infobase Publishing, 2008, page 58〕 The foreman who held the stairway door key had already escaped by another route.〔PBS: ("Introduction: Triangle Fire" ), accessed March 1, 2011〕 Dozens of employees escaped the fire by going up the Greene Street stairway to the roof. Other survivors were able to jam themselves into the elevators while they continued to operate. Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway became unusable in both directions.〔von Drehle, 143–4〕 Terrified employees crowded onto the single exterior fire escape, which city officials had allowed Asch to erect instead of the required third staircase.〔von Drehl, p.118〕 It was a flimsy and poorly anchored iron structure which may have been broken before the fire. It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload, spilling about 20 victims nearly to their deaths on the concrete pavement below. Elevator operators Joseph Zito〔von Drehle, p. 157〕 and Gaspar Mortillalo saved many lives by traveling three times up to the ninth floor for passengers, but Mortillalo was eventually forced to give up when the rails of his elevator buckled under the heat. Some victims pried the elevator doors open and jumped into the empty shaft, trying to slide down the cables or to land on top of the car. The weight and impacts of these bodies warped the elevator car and made it impossible for Zito to make another attempt. William Gunn Shepard, a reporter at the tragedy, would say that "I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture -- the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk".〔von Drehle, p.126〕 Even once firefighters arrived, their ladders were only long enough to reach as high as the sixth to seventh floors.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title= The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire )〕 A large crowd of bystanders gathered on the street, witnessing 62 people jumping or falling to their deaths from the burning building. Louis Waldman, later a New York Socialist state assemblyman, described the scene years later: The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond the sixth floor. The fallen bodies and falling victims also made it difficult for the fire department to approach the building. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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