Steuer: Objection!

Crain: Witness will limit her testimony to her own experience, please.

Witness: So there is this big explosion like I already said. And now I see these flames and the girls all around me started to shout and scream, my sister also, and everyone goes in a commotion, and the flames, they get bigger at the window and then they come inside with us, coming along the wall and across the floor, it’s like water flowing, I’ve never seen anything like that, and everyone is frightened and suddenly it’s pandemonium. Now the flames go all around, every which way, and it gets hot like a furnace. Everyone screams, but nobody moves, everybody is like a statue for just that second, maybe this is my imagination but that’s what it seemed like to me, everyone is frozen like a statue, and then there is a rush of all the girls, everybody trying to go out, but there is in the way all the machinery, on the tables, and there are girls trying to crawl under but you can’t go under, and everybody is pushing and there were girls climbing across the tables, but some of them, their long skirts got bunched and they got caught in the machines.

Bostwick: Please continue.

Witness: It was like a madhouse. Everyone was screaming and pushing and calling and some girls were praying and nobody could hear what anyone else was calling out. Then Mr. Grannick, one of the older garment cutters, he stood up on a chair and tried to call out something but nobody could see him except if you were close because of the smoke. There was so much smoke, and people were screaming and coughing and choking and nobody could hear what he was saying with the noise—he was one of the ones who got out—and I saw a girl with her hair on fire, and then another one was running by with her clothes all burning up. It was all a shock.

Bostwick: Do you want a drink of water?

Witness: No, I go on now and tell the rest. There were these two Italian sisters, they just stood there screaming but not moving, which doesn’t help anyone, and they were in my way, they were choking and their faces were all red, so I go past them, and they’re not moving, and I never saw them again. Then I see there are too many girls at that door—

Bostwick: Which door is this?

Witness: The Washington Place door. Nobody could go out that way; it was a terrible thing, but nobody’s fault, because the door, it opened in, didn’t we all know that already. They inspected us going out that door every day, they had a guard to look into our bags and even poke us to see if we had anything hidden in our garments, they always had to make sure we weren’t stealing any of the goods.

Bostwick: Did you try to open this door?