As the building caught on fire and panic set in, many workers rushed to the elevators to escape. “I ran to the elevator because that was the only place to run to… the fire crept closer to us and we were crowded at the elevator door banging and hollering for the elevator” tells Celia Walker Friedman.1
Workers who couldn’t reach the elevator or didn’t get on in time were trapped in the building. Ida Kornweiser tells how she kept a cool head and escaped the burning building suffering first degree burns.2 “I ran upstairs” to the 10th floor and “got out on the roof.”3 In the next building was a class of New York University students who saw the fire and rushed to the roof to help the worker across to safety.4 “I remember how, with the help of students, we put boards across from one building to the other,” Ida Kornweiser recounts. “That is how we were saved – during the whole time I didn’t get panicky. The way I remember it, I knew every minute, just what I was doing.”5 The vast majority of other workers trapped in the factory ablaze with flames ran towards the windows and many jumped out to escape the fire, often catastrophically falling to their deaths. As Mary Domsky-Abrams describes,
The tragedy was even greater because of the fact that the fireman’s ladders were too short and couldn’t reach the ninth and tenth floors. Also, the nets spread to catch the jumpers were too weak, and many plunged right through to their deaths. I saw a number of firemen crying as they witnessed victims of the fire killed as they broke through the nets.6
Many tried in vain to catch workers while other bystanders and workers who were able to escape, could only watch paralyzed in shocked horror.
1. Celia Walker Friedman, interview by Leon Stein, in person, 1957. Trianglefire.Ilr.Cornell.Edu, 2018. https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/survivorInterviews/CeliaWalkerFriedman.html.
2. Ida Kornweiser, interview by Leon Stein, in person, 1951. Trianglefire.Ilr.Cornell.Edu, 2018. https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/survivorInterviews/IdaKornweiser.html.
3. Ibid.
4. Michael Keene, with Hasia R. Diner, “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” Podcast. Talking Heart Island, 2019. https://talkinghartisland.podbean.com/e/the-triangle-shirt-waist-factory-fire-with-hasia-diner/.
5. Kornweiser, interview by Leon Stein.
6. Mary Domsky-Abrams, interview by Leon Stein, in person. Trianglefire.Ilr.Cornell.Edu, 2018. https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/survivorInterviews/MaryDomskyAbrams.html.