Read Online The Triangle Fire by William Greider, Leon Stein, Michael Hirsch - Free Book Online
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a window.
“I saw men pouring water on the fire at the cutting tables. The wicker baskets where the lace runners worked were beginning to burn. I was scared. Rose was pulling me and screaming.
“Suddenly, I felt I was going in the wrong direction. I broke loose. I couldn’t go with her to the windows. This is what saved my life. Always, even as a child, even now, I have had a great fear of height.
“I turned back into the shop. Rose Feibush, my beautiful, dear friend, jumped from a window.
“I saw Brown get the door open. Somebody pushed me through. I don’t remember how I got down. I was cold and wet and hysterical. I was screaming all the time.
“When we came to the bottom the firemen wouldn’t let us out. The bodies were falling all around. They were afraid we would be killed by the falling bodies. I stood there screaming.”
Two men carried Sylvia across the street into a store and “stretched me out on the floor.”
She had swallowed so much smoke that they tried to pour milk into her for its emetic effect. But for one who had known hunger, milk could have only one purpose. “They gave me a lot of milk to drink to give me back my strength,” is the way Sylvia Riegler remembered it almost half a century later. “But I couldn’t hold it. All the time I could see through the store window the burning bodies falling.”
On the eighth floor the flames had cut across the shop. Now they rose like a wall, cutting Bernstein and Dinah Lifschitz off from the Washington Place door. The corridor through the flames to the Greene Street door was perilously narrow.
“It was getting dark with smoke and there sat my cousin Dinah trying to get upstairs on the telephone or on the writing machine,” Samuel Bernstein said. “She was getting no answer. She screamed ‘fire’ through the telephone and she screamed it so loud I stopped her. She would have scared the girl on the other end.
“We weren’t getting the message through to the ninth floor. Remember, we had to make contact through the tenth floor switchboard. I said, ‘For God’s sake, those people don’t know! How can we make them know?’”
Dinah Lifschitz cried: “I can’t get anyone! I can’t get anyone!”
Bernstein realized the moment of decision had come.
“I said, ‘Dinah, we are the last ones,’ and I ordered her to drop the phone and get out. I remembered I had relatives on the ninth floor and they were all very dear to me. I ran through the blaze and the smoke to try to get to the ninth floor.
“I don’t know how I got into the Greene Street staircase. But I could not get into the ninth floor. Twenty feet from the door on that floor was a barrel container of motor oil. I suppose that was burning. I don’t know. The blaze was so strong I could not get into the ninth floor. Then I ran up to the tenth floor. I found it was burning there, too.”
On the other side of the flames, on the opposite side of the eighth floor, machinist Brown and Patrolman Meehan came back up to the eighth floor to make certain everyone was out.
“We yanked two girls out of a window and got them to the staircase,” Brown said. “I went back to the window to see if anyone else was there. The people in the street saw me. They raised their hands and yelled for me not to jump. When I saw that I decided it was time for me to turn around and get out.
“But I couldn’t find my way out any more. It was so black with smoke that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even see the door. I knew the doorway was about fifteen feet in front of me. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled out that doorway.”
Eight floors below, Fireman Oliver Mahoney of Company 72 which had arrived at 4:46½, burst into the Washington Place lobby.
“At first we couldn’t even get into the lobby. As I got in, an elevator opened and another group of frightened people got out. We pushed through,” said Fireman Mahoney.
Three other firemen carrying the hose on their shoulders followed
“I saw men pouring water on the fire at the cutting tables. The wicker baskets where the lace runners worked were beginning to burn. I was scared. Rose was pulling me and screaming.
“Suddenly, I felt I was going in the wrong direction. I broke loose. I couldn’t go with her to the windows. This is what saved my life. Always, even as a child, even now, I have had a great fear of height.
“I turned back into the shop. Rose Feibush, my beautiful, dear friend, jumped from a window.
“I saw Brown get the door open. Somebody pushed me through. I don’t remember how I got down. I was cold and wet and hysterical. I was screaming all the time.
“When we came to the bottom the firemen wouldn’t let us out. The bodies were falling all around. They were afraid we would be killed by the falling bodies. I stood there screaming.”
Two men carried Sylvia across the street into a store and “stretched me out on the floor.”
She had swallowed so much smoke that they tried to pour milk into her for its emetic effect. But for one who had known hunger, milk could have only one purpose. “They gave me a lot of milk to drink to give me back my strength,” is the way Sylvia Riegler remembered it almost half a century later. “But I couldn’t hold it. All the time I could see through the store window the burning bodies falling.”
On the eighth floor the flames had cut across the shop. Now they rose like a wall, cutting Bernstein and Dinah Lifschitz off from the Washington Place door. The corridor through the flames to the Greene Street door was perilously narrow.
“It was getting dark with smoke and there sat my cousin Dinah trying to get upstairs on the telephone or on the writing machine,” Samuel Bernstein said. “She was getting no answer. She screamed ‘fire’ through the telephone and she screamed it so loud I stopped her. She would have scared the girl on the other end.
“We weren’t getting the message through to the ninth floor. Remember, we had to make contact through the tenth floor switchboard. I said, ‘For God’s sake, those people don’t know! How can we make them know?’”
Dinah Lifschitz cried: “I can’t get anyone! I can’t get anyone!”
Bernstein realized the moment of decision had come.
“I said, ‘Dinah, we are the last ones,’ and I ordered her to drop the phone and get out. I remembered I had relatives on the ninth floor and they were all very dear to me. I ran through the blaze and the smoke to try to get to the ninth floor.
“I don’t know how I got into the Greene Street staircase. But I could not get into the ninth floor. Twenty feet from the door on that floor was a barrel container of motor oil. I suppose that was burning. I don’t know. The blaze was so strong I could not get into the ninth floor. Then I ran up to the tenth floor. I found it was burning there, too.”
On the other side of the flames, on the opposite side of the eighth floor, machinist Brown and Patrolman Meehan came back up to the eighth floor to make certain everyone was out.
“We yanked two girls out of a window and got them to the staircase,” Brown said. “I went back to the window to see if anyone else was there. The people in the street saw me. They raised their hands and yelled for me not to jump. When I saw that I decided it was time for me to turn around and get out.
“But I couldn’t find my way out any more. It was so black with smoke that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even see the door. I knew the doorway was about fifteen feet in front of me. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled out that doorway.”
Eight floors below, Fireman Oliver Mahoney of Company 72 which had arrived at 4:46½, burst into the Washington Place lobby.
“At first we couldn’t even get into the lobby. As I got in, an elevator opened and another group of frightened people got out. We pushed through,” said Fireman Mahoney.
Three other firemen carrying the hose on their shoulders followed
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