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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Essay

738 Words3 Pages

For this assignment, I reviewed the Great Fire of Chicago that occurred on October 8, 1871. A man-made hazard that has a lot of similarities to this fire would be the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. This fire happened on March 25, 1911, and was one of the most notorious industrial fires that have occurred in the United States. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire happened in the Asch Building located in downtown Manhattan. There were around 230-275 workers distributed throughout two floors when the fire broke out at quitting time. A fire department was located less than six blocks from the building and was able to put the fire out in 18 minutes. When the fire department completely extinguished the fire, the body count was 146 with a complete …show more content…

First, the acting fire department commissioner could have enforced the owners and workers to participate in fire drills. These drills could have deterred the number of employees that traveled to the roof and prevented the number of employees that ultimately jumped to their death. While New York at the time was working on passing stricter factory fire protection laws, there should have been more fire inspections at this particular facility due to the four previous fires that had occurred. When we look closely at this fire, blueprints show that the stairwells were only a mere 33 inches wide. With the amount of workers entering and exiting this building 33 inches is not enough when large quantities of people must exit quickly while fire personnel is coming to distinguish any fires. When looking more closely at the structure of the building the most obvious design flaw was the fact that the exit doors opened to the inside. When fire exits have a design like this, it deters how fast large quantities of people can exit at any given time. The text highlighted mitigating tools that can reduce risk to people and their property and if these tools were utilized before this fire some individuals that lost their life that day would have been minimal if any at all. One of the mentionable tools is taxation and fiscal policies. The owners stated in multiple investigations that the cost was just

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