We will never know for sure what started the Triangle Fire. Most likely, a cutter flicked a hot ash or tossed a live cigarette butt into a scrap bin. Whatever the cause, survivors said the first sign of trouble was smoke pouring from beneath a cutting table. 

Cutters flung buckets of water at the smoking spot, without effect. Flames shot up, igniting the line of hanging paper patterns. “They began to fall on the layers of thin goods underneath them,” recalled cutter Max Rothen. “Every time another piece dropped, light scraps of burning fabric began to fly around the room. They came down on the other tables and they fell on the machines. Then the line broke and the whole string of burning patterns fell down.” A foreman ran for the hose on the stairway wall. Nothing! No water came. The hose had not been connected to the standpipe. Seconds later, the fire leaped out of control.

Yet help was already on the way. At exactly 4:45 p.m., someone pulled the eighth-floor fire alarm. In less than two minutes, the horse-drawn vehicles of Engine Company 72 arrived from a firehouse six blocks away. The moment they arrived, the firefighters unloaded their equipment and prepared to swing into action. As they did, the area pumping station raised water pressure in the hydrants near the Asch Building. Other units soon arrived from across the Lower East Side with more equipment. 

Those who could not board elevators rushed the stairway door. They caused a pileup so that those in front could not open the door. Whenever someone tried to get it open, the crowd pinned her against it. “All the girls were falling on me and they squeezed me to the door,” Ida Willensky recalled. “Three times I said to the girls, ‘Please, girls, let me open the door. Please!’ But they would not listen to me.” Finally, cutter Louis Brown barged through the crowd and forced the door open.