what caused the fire in the triangle shirtwaist factory
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire As the workday was ending on the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire flared up at approximately 4:40 PM in a scrap bin under one of the cutter's tables at the northeast corner of the eighth floor.[12] The first fire alarm was sent at 4:45 PM by a passerby on Washington Place who saw smoke coming from the eighth floor.[13] Both owners of the factory were in attendance and had invited their children to the factory on that afternoon.[14] The Fire Marshal concluded that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished match or cigarette butt in the scrap bin, which held two months' worth of accumulated cuttings by the time of the fire.[15] Beneath the table in the wooden bin were hundreds of pounds of scraps which were left over from the several thousand shirtwaists that had been cut at that table. The scraps piled up from the last time the bin was emptied, coupled with the hanging fabrics that surrounded it; the steel trim was the only thing that was not highly flammable.[12] Although smoking was banned in the factory, cutters were known to sneak cigarettes, exhaling the smoke through their lapels to avoid detection.[16] A New York Times article suggested that the fire may have been started by the engines running the sewing machines. A series of articles in Collier's noted a pattern of arson among certain sectors of the garment industry whenever their particular product fell out of fashion or had excess inventory in order to collect insurance. The Insurance Monitor, a leading industry journal, observed that shirtwaists had recently fallen out of fashion, and that insurance for manufacturers of them was "fairly saturated with moral hazard." Although Blanck and Harris were known for having had four previous suspicious fires at their companies, arson was not suspected in this case.[14]
We Didn't Start the Fire A music video for the single was directed by Chris Blum,[10] which chronicles a white middle-class married couple and their goal of the American Dream: a home, careers, and children. This is symbolised by the constant revamping of a domestic kitchen – 1940s utilitarian turning into 1950s Populuxe, 1960s op art, 1970s earth-colored tiles and macramé, and finally 1980s black lacquer & granite bench tops. This is juxtaposed with symbols of the tumultuous social times of the second half of the 20th century (e.g., bra burning, lynching, and draft-card burning). The singer acts as an unseen but omnipresent observer. During each chorus, Joel wearing sunglasses (similar to Roy Orbison's) rhythmically beats on a black table; in the background, famous photographs (of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination and Nguyễn Văn Lém's execution, among others) are consumed by fire, a metaphor of the song's theme and title.