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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire killed 146 New York City garment workers, many of them young women. A locked door, preventing escape, was widely blamed for the high toll.
In Bangladesh, ninety-five years later:
A garment factory fire has again claimed the lives of scores of women in an outbreak of fire … According to reports, the fire originating from the blast of a boiler raced through the entire four-story building which housed a factory of KTS, a composite textile mill, Thursday evening. About 250 factory employees, mostly underprivileged women, were on duty in the evening shift.
Casualty figures keep rising and latest reports mention 85 deaths and a few hundred injured. The figures may rise further which will go to make the incident one of the worst industrial tragedies in the country’s history … As in most previous incidents of garment factory fire, the workers could not run to safety because the gate was locked.
- Its Bush’s fault. The rampant rise of globalisation has meant that Bangladeshi workers have jobs and are now as a result, more likely to die in a fire. Bush must go.Posted by Nic on 2006 02 25 at 01:20 AM • permalink
- Damn. A real tragedy. My condolences to the families.
But I often think that it’s not history that’s being repeated, it’s stupidity.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 02 25 at 01:26 AM • permalink
- There was a similar incident in Arkansas a few years back at a chicken processing factory. The employer had locked all the emergency exits because employees were stealing chickens. There was a fire, and in the stampede for the only open exit, some people were trampled, crushed and burned.
“About 250 factory employees, mostly underprivileged women, were on duty in the evening shift.”
“Underprivileged women” work at factory sweatshops? There’s a shocker. I would have expected a mix of Harvard MBAs, would-be lawyers waiting for the results of the Bar Exam, and Jimmah Carter’s daugher.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 02 25 at 01:46 AM • permalink
- Tragic it is, but this is the ‘third world’—substandard factories and non-enforcment of regulations, shoddy buildings made from bad concrete that collapse at the slightest tremor, rampant corruption and payoffs to officials to turn a blind eye. ‘Twas ever thus. Life is cheap in Bangladesh and the locals are probably not overly concerned about it—happens regularly but rarely gets into the news.Posted by walterplinge on 2006 02 25 at 05:41 AM • permalink
- A sorry repeat of the Thai Kadar Toy Factory Fire that killed 188 workers.
The Kader Fire of 1993 was unfortunately, in many ways, a repeat of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911. As we look to the future, we need to recognize all that we need to do, as a global society, to prevent history from repeating itself.
- #5 walterplinge—I saw a crawl on FoxNews the other day, after a headline about a bus accident in China. I think it said approx. 100,000 are killed in such accidents in that country every year…can that be right? A HUNDRED THOUSAND? The MSM in this country goes apeshit & wages a holy war on every death caused by anything that might be someone’s FAULT…but they can’t do that in China (or Mexico or Bangladesh or…), can they?
That kind of fire happens just often enough to remind me how terrific my little life is.
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