Collection 6: "Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy" by Albert Marrin

Nearby, about a hundred women did basting and other tasks.

Lawn was not just any cotton fabric. Sheer and lightweight, it was beautiful and comfortable—and burned as easily as gasoline.

Each layer was separated from the others by a sheet of equally flammable tissue paper.

From time to time, workers would take the finished shirtwaists to the tenth floor for inspection, packing, and shipping.

Although they had no inkling of what was about to happen, many had only minutes to live.

There were no lights in the stairway, so they had to grope their way in darkness.

Now, as fire raged on the eighth floor, the elevator shafts became wind tunnels.

On the ninth floor, embers landed on piles of finished shirtwaists and cans of oil used to make the sewing machines run smoothly. Instantly, the air itself seemed to catch fire.

Had there been fire drills, surely more would have survived. Unfortunately, confusion reigned.

Those who reached the ninth-floor stairway door found it locked. This was not unusual, as employers often locked doors to discourage latecomers and keep out union organizers.

Firefighters charged into the building, stretching a hose up the stairways as they went. At the sixth-floor landing, they connected it to the standpipe. Reaching the eighth floor, they crawled into the inferno on their bellies, under the rising smoke, with their hose.

Photos of the portable towers show streams of water playing on the three top floors.

The aerial ladders failed, too, reaching only to the sixth floor.

Down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking—flaming bodies, with the disheveled hair trailing upward....

For some women, said Sommer, “it was necessary to beat out the flames that had caught their clothing, and many of them had blackened faces and singed hair and eyebrows.”