Book Review

Triangle—The Fire that Changed America
By Carol Woodruff
ASSE National Capital Chapter Secretary

Triangle—The Fire that Changed America
By David Von Drehle
Grove Press 2003

“One hundred forty six employees die in a workplace fire—mostly young immigrant women.” Think this is a headline from a sweat shop in a third-world country? This is not the case. This is a headline from New York newspapers in March 1911. Death was the leading workplace safety issue for women in the early 1900s.

Life for professional women in the early part of the 20th century was incredibly difficult. Women did not yet have the right to vote and were still considered second-class citizens. Sexual harassment and abuse were widespread with no opportunity of escape—if your job was to be kept. Few opportunities for women existed in the workforce, with little security or safety of any kind. David Von Drehle’s book, Triangle—The Fire that Changed America (Grove Press 2003), does not make excuses or gloss over the reality of the times.

Sewing factories provided jobs for many women and men during this time in history. Von Drehle’s account of the daily life of workers in 1911 is a jolting reminder of why safety in the workplace is not only the law, but the motivation for most of us who chose safety as a career. Accounts taken from newspapers, magazines, union trade papers and a website from Cornell University give the historical backdrop and eyewitness accounts of this tragic event at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City.

The early 1900s in America was an era of industry, manufacturing, mass immigration and political corruption. Tammany Hall ruled New York, and labor unions were born out of horrible workplace wages and conditions. Triangle unfolds in this backdrop of struggling immigrants, powerful business barons and corrupt government.

Chapter five, “Inferno,” sets the stage for the tragedy of the subtitle “the fire that changed America.” Describing the layout of the factory, what passed for codes for building safety and attempts at emergency evacuation procedures, Von Drehle gives an inside look at a traditional workplace in the early 20th century. A cigarette butt or match in a scrap pile initiates a chain of events in a major high-rise structure fire of the times. The lack of building codes, firefighting technology and emergency procedures are obvious in the account. It is the vivid description of the confusion, the fear, the screaming, the hopelessness for those trapped in an inescapable hell that compels me to share this book with you. “I learned a new sound,” he [Shepherd] wrote afterward, “a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.”

“ Panic. ‘Yes, screaming and crying and shouting,’ said Mary Bucelli, an operator with two years experience at the Triangle. Everything blurred as she ran through the loft looking for a way out.”

“Anyone who failed to choose-and to choose quickly-was doomed.”
“Behind the workers in the windows were screams of terror on the rising growl of more and larger flames. As they stood on the sills, fire licked up beneath their feet. …NO! as in No, don’t jump! Their tiny hands were up, as if a gesture could hold the doomed workers forever in the mouth of a furnace.”

Very few of us need motivation for workplace injustices or incidents to bring out our natural passion to champion safety and those workers in whose faith we are trusted. This is to encourage us as SH&E professionals to take this challenge to realize the progress that has been made and the challenges that yet lie before us. A short 268 pages of text can be read over a weather-dampened weekend or an hour after work each evening for a week or two. You are invited to share this story that reveals a time in our history when our profession was born.