Lessons Learned from Great NY Fires

Today marks the 100^th anniversary of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York in which 146 garment workers lost theirs lives.  But this wasn’t the only fire tragedy at the turn of the century that was made worse by a lack of safety standards.

On January 9, 1912, while battling a great blaze in New York City in which three firemen and six civilians would be killed, a Native American fireman Seneca Larke Jr. fought desperately to rescue more before they died.  His valor caught the public’s imagination.

On a cold morning the call had gone out for a fire at the Equitable Insurance Building in Manhattan, which housed stores, a restaurant, a lawyer’s club, and a bank. Upon arrival, Chief John Kenlon ordered his men into the building.

The weather was bitterly cold that day.  A steady, sharp wind blew and ice began forming on the equipment and the building.

William Giblin, the bank president and two employees, rushed to the basement vault to rescue millions of dollars in cash, bonds and securities.

Kenlon, his clothing and face icing up, looked on in despair as one of his chiefs, two firemen and six waiters in the club, plunged to their deaths.

Giblin and his colleagues, had become trapped in the basement but managed to call to firemen outside through a narrow, iron-barred window in the vault room.

As Kenlon and others watched, Larke started his desperate attempt to save Giblin and his colleagues.  He lay on his stomach on the ground at the basement window and sawed at the barred windows.

Water from the hoses showered onto him, turning him into an ice sculpture.  At one point, another firemen had to hammer ice off the arm of Larke’s firecoat so that he could continue.

After an hour, the bar finally gave way.  Giblin and another man crawled out through the opening, but the third was dead, overcome by smoke.

The story of Seneca Larke and the Equitable fire was a sensation.  Within three weeks, postcard photos of the fire were the most popular items on the newsstands.

For the New York City Fire Department, the lesson of the Equitable fire was that it needed specialized equipment, such as acetylene torches, breathing masks and grappling hooks to perform rescues.

The result was the creation of Rescue One and the rescue service, today the most elite civilian rescue service in the country.  The rescue companies were an immediate success.