March 25, 1911

Many articles and commentaries have been written about this tragic day 100 years ago.  But it is important to never forget this tragedy, just like we should never forget other disasters like the Bhopal catastrophe.

Downtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village. All of a sudden window glass bursts in a sudden explosion. Black and grey smoke starts drifting though the streets. Women are screaming for help. The people in the street stand scared. James Meehan, a police officer, jumps off his horse and runs into the burning building.

It is 4:40 PM on Saturday, March 25th, 1911 when hell breaks loose. Only five minutes later the 600 female workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory would have finished their work shift. It is the end of a long and stressful work week for young women workers between 16 and 26 years old. Most of them are immigrants from Russia, Italy and Germany. They work 6 days and 72 hours per week. Weekly earnings: $ 7.

Despite the bad working conditions the company is the only opportunity for the young immigrants to earn money. The owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris who are also immigrants from Europe, know this very well. They rule the company with an iron fist and whoever complains is fired.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company is located on the three upper floors of the ten-story building. The structure was completed in 1901 and meets the fire codes of the era. However, there is no sprinkler system installed. The owners have never performed any fire drills although there have been a number of small fires in the past.

Nobody knows why the fire started this Saturday afternoon. It is assumed that a still burning cigarette butt was the cause of the fire. The floor of the manufacturing space was always covered in flammable pieces of cloth which would spread the fire rapidly. This day will end with the death of 146 workers.

The inferno starts in the southeast wing of the 8th floor. The flames spread fast through the area as most of the furnishings are made from wood. Within seconds thousands of finished shirts on the sewing tables are in flames. The panic starts. The seamstresses try to escape the building via a stairwell that is still accessible. An accountant informs his colleagues on the 10th floor by phone about the fire. Some workers escape through a door to the roof of the building where they will later be rescued. But the phone connection to the 9th floor is interrupted and the workers still don’t know that the fire is blazing on the floor below.

James Meehan cannot see anything. When the police officer gets to the 8th floor the smoke is black and he is almost without orientation and it is hard to breathe. The 6 feet flames use up all the oxygen. The heat is unbearable. Lifeless bodies block the access to the elevator; some of them are burned beyond recognition. In the stairwell the seamstresses are falling and tripping over each other and trample each other to death.

Together with Joseph Zito, the elevator operator and another employee of the company, Meehan is able to start the elevator again. At least five times they are able to ride up to the 8th floor and the lobby and rescue workers until finally the heat and the fire destroy the elevator. The men are able to rescue more than 130 workers.

Only when the flames are breaking through the floor, the seamstresses on the 9th floor realize the situation. The stairwell in the southeast wing of the building is no longer a possible fire exit route. The door to a second stairwell is locked from the outside. The owners locked the door to prevent thieves entering the building. There is no longer an accessible stairwell. There is one more chance for the young women, a fire ladder on the outside of the building. But the ladder is damaged and collapses. 24 workers fall to their deaths.

When the first fire fighters reach the site the flames has already engulfed all three floors. The fire fighters are the last hope for the women on the 9th floor. The equipment is set up and the ladders are pulled out. And then the bystanders witness the unbelievable: the ladders are only long enough to reach up to the 6th floor. Although since 1900 more than 800 new buildings were constructed which had more than 6 floors, the equipment of the fire fighters was never replaced and updated.

The young women on the 9th floor are faced with death. Many decide to jump out of the windows from the 9th floor. Some hold hands while they jump, two or three at a time. The fire fighters try to catch the women with nets. Without success. Even the safety standards of the safety nets are not designed for jumps higher than from a 6th floor. None of the women survives. Only 18 minutes after the fire started the flames have destroyed all three floors completely.

In April 1911, after it is made public that the owners had locked the escape routes on the 9th floor, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris are accused of manslaughter. Due to their connections in city politics both are acquitted. A civil lawsuit is initiated by 23 families of the diseased and Blanck and Harris have to pay $ 75 per victim in 1913, altogether only a fifth of the insurance compensation that they received for the loss of the business.

Shortly after the disaster there is a public outcry for more workplace safety. In 1900 the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union had been established, but this union of the female workers had not had any influence on their rights in the manufacturing companies. On June 20, 1911, only three months after the fire, Governor John Alden Dix signed a law which initiated the foundation of the Factory Investigation Commission. Frances Perkins, later the Labor Secretary, was the chairman of the commission and fought for integration and implementation of worker’s rights, resulting in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Frances Perkins was one of the eye witnesses of the disaster of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. After she retired from active politics she told reporters her reasons for her initiative to fight for worker’s rights. She said that the tragedy she witnessed on March 25, 1911 was forever etched into her memory and the disaster was the reason why she dedicated her life’s work to the fight against inhuman working conditions.

Based on an article in www.spiegel.de 03.29.11

Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining

TEPKO partially blames Fukushima Workers for their burn injuries from radioactive exposure!

It amazes me that after all the things that went wrong in Fukushima, the workers are still partially blamed for their own injuries.  Excuse me, folks, this is just the biggest BS I have ever heard. These are men who are trying to do everything to protect their own people, their own country, repairing and fixing whatever they can - and all at the cost of their own lives – you don’t really think that these men, these heroes really, will enjoy a nice long retirement. With the incredible radiation they are exposed to, they know that they have signed their death certificate. They are giving their lives for others. And Tepco is trying to tell us the burn injuries are partially their own fault?

(CNN) – “The water three men were exposed to while working at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had 10,000 times the amount of radiation typical for that locale, an official with the Japan nuclear and industrial safety agency said Friday. The contamination is likely from the No. 3 reactor's core, the official, Hidehiko Nishiyama said. He said there's a possibility of "some sort of leakage" -- including potentially from a crack in the unit's containment vessel.

The incident raised questions about radiation control measures at the plant as 536 people -- including government authorities and firefighters continued working there Friday, according to an official with the plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Workers are undertaking various measures to prevent the further release of radioactive substances into the air and beyond.

Some 17 people already have been exposed to 100 or more millisieverts of radiation since the plant's crisis began two weeks ago after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck.

A person in an industrialized country is naturally exposed to 3 millisieverts of radiation a year. But Japan's health ministry recently raised the maximum level of exposure for a person working to address the crisis at the nuclear plant from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts per year” (http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/25/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T1).

Spiegel. De (http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,753058,00.html. 03.25.11) indicates that Tepco says that the injuries the workers received who were exposed to the radioactive water in reactor block 3 were partially their own fault (!). Tepco claims that the workers had measuring devices but ignored the alarm. On Thursday the men had been working in the lower floor of the turbine building of reactor block 3. The day before there had been no water and no increased radiation. Therefore, they were not wearing special protective high work boots, and the water was seeping into their work shoes. Two of the three workers were transported to a special clinic as they had burn injuries. Today they will be transported from the hospital in Fukushima to the city of Chiba south of Tokyo – to the national institute for radiation research.

Isn’t it very interesting that Japan’s health ministry suddenly decided to raise the maximum level of exposure more than 100% - simply to make the exposure seem to be not as lethal as before? Like in so many instances, these are attempts to cover up the safety issues that were ignored over a long period of time, and now it is the man on the street, the workers, the people of Japan that are suffering and will continue to suffer, simply because at one point in time it was too “expensive” and “inconvenient” to pre-plan for the worst-case-scenario and be satisfied with mediocre safety precautions.

And, let’s face it. The radioactivity is spreading to the US, Iceland and Europe. Maybe the levels are indeed very low, but let’s not forget that even if the reactors will be cooled and there is not immediate danger of meltdowns, they will continue to emit radiation until they are enclosed. This means that radioactivity will continuously be released and spread across our globe.

And if you believe that this can only happen in Japan, because we here in the US are so much more safety oriented, let me remind you of Hanford, WA.

Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining

Safety Issues in the Nuclear Power Plant Fukushima

Based on an article taken from www.Spiegel.de on 03/17/11, fundamental errors were made during the construction planning stage of the nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi. An engineer who was involved in the construction of the plant, Shiro Qgura, said that at the beginning of the construction of reactor 1 in 1967, the construction design based on the US company General Electric were used.

Although the location on the sandy coast line in the northeast of Japan is an earthquake prone area close to the ocean and is apparently different than the location of the US nuclear power plants, neither reactors nor safety systems were planned involving a possible tsunami. Despite the differences, the construction design was almost identical to the US plants. Ogura said that the danger of tsunamis was not at all taken into consideration. Ogura was involved in designing the cooling systems for all reactors except the fourth, according to the Japanese newspaper “Hokkaido”. Oguro said that that they were close to being ignorant, and that they did not ensure that the safety systems were sufficient.

The retired engineer emphasized the Japanese lack of experience in regards to nuclear technology during that time. He said that during the construction/design of reactor #1 they had no experience. They knew that the location was in the danger zone of earthquakes and tsunamis but that they were not able to take these dangers into consideration.

During the construction of the second reactor the design of GE was improved. However, apparently it was not enough. Oruga continued: “At that time we were told that in this area there was no danger of earthquakes stronger than 8 on the Richter scale”. During the following decades these statements were not revised. Shortly before his retirement the systems had been reviewed in regards to earthquakes but a strong earthquake as the recent one was not considered. “I feel responsible”, Oruga said in regards to the nuclear catastrophe.

Engineer Masashi Goto, who was also a previous employee of Toshiba, said that the catastrophe of the past days have shown that besides the power supply other safety systems were insufficiently planed for an emergency. The containment which houses the reactor pressure container was only rated for 50% of the pressure which actually occurred after the event. In addition he believes that the diameter of the pipes which have been used in the past days to release the steam from the containment might be too small. Multiple safety systems which should have been installed independently of each other were insufficient. When the pumps ceased to function due to the failure of the emergency power supply, replacement systems had been used which were designed for fire protection but not for the cooling of nuclear reactors.

Meike Patten, MPSafetyTraining

Bad Things Can Come in Small Packages (Hazardous Waste - Chemical Reactions)

Review the original article at the "Process Safety Beacon", March Edition - Messages for Manufacturing Personnel

http://www.aiche.org/CCPS/Publications/Beacon/index.aspx

An incident occurred while decontaminating a pail containing hazardous waste. An operator was neutralizing a small quantity of process waste which had been drained into a pail during a maintenance operation. It contained small amounts of metallic sodium, a material that reacts violently with water. The procedure was to add dry methanol to the waste in the pail, warm it, and allow it to react for 6-7 hours. The operator followed the procedure and, after the reaction period he poured the liquid waste from the pail. He was preparing to flush the pail when more material from the pail spilled, contacted water from rainfall, and set off an exothermic reaction that injured the operator.

The pictures show pails, drums, and other small containers of hazardous waste, stored prior to disposal. It is important to remember that there can be serious hazards, even for hazardous materials and wastes stored in relatively small quantities. In particular, small containers can be very hazardous for people working near the materials – perhaps adding additional waste to the containers or conducting some kind of neutralization, decontamination, or other chemical operations. It is also important to consider the storage conditions for hazardous waste – for example, are there hazards from high temperature (polymerization, decomposition) or low temperature (freezing)?

Why did it happen?

The waste pail was found containing 2-3 inches of sludge from the maintenance procedure, and was not labeled. The operator asked other operators about the

waste and was told to dispose of it in the usual way. However, the sludge contained

a layer of solids that prevented the sodium from contacting the methanol and reacting

as desired. The procedure did not require the operator to mix the neutralized solution

to ensure complete reaction.

What can you do?

• Label all containers, especially those containing process waste.
• Remember that even small containers can present a
• big hazard.
• Test unknown materials so you know what they are, and safe waste disposal procedures can be developed.
• Make sure that maintenance procedures include instructions on safe waste labeling and disposal.
• During routine drainage operations report anything unusual (for example, sludge or unexpected solids) to your supervisor.

Link sent in by Augie Rincon, ConocoPhilips