The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was the horrific result of unregulated capitalism. 146 people – mostly women -burned to death or were smashed on the pavement nine stories below the factory floor when fire raged through their Greenwich Village workplace.

The mind reels when contemplating the last moments of the victims, who moments before had been looking forward to a Saturday night with friends and family, and a Sunday (gasp!) off work. When the fire below burst through the stairwells and floor it found bins of dry cotton, wooden worktables, beams, walls and floors.  There was no escape – the owners had locked the exit doors. The conflagration exploded in seconds, and women and men young and old were gone in moments.

And yes, this was foreseen, and preventable. This from David Drehle:

Despite the New York City fire commissioner’s well-publicized prediction that a deadly blaze in a high-rise loft factory was inevitable — and despite multiple small fires during working hours at the Triangle — the owners ignored a consultant’s advice to perform regular fire drills to train workers for an emergency. And they declined to enforce their posted rule against smoking near the highly flammable cotton scraps their workers snipped by the ton.

Long ignored, for over a century there was no memorial, no permanent reminder of the tragedy, no tribute to the mostly-immigrant women who died that awful day. That ended when Mary Ann Trasciatti and others’ relentless effort culminated in this…the steel runs along the building, listing names and ages of the victims and quotes from survivors. It will be completed early next year.

Good friend and colleague Rick Sabetta reminded me of this, and I am indebted to him.

What does this mean for you?

We would be well-advised to learn a lesson from days past, a lesson seemingly ignored by those looking to employ young kids in dangerous jobs and downplay the very real dangers of heat exposure in agriculture and logistics.

Old coal-fired electric plants are being converted to manufacturing, residential, office, and recreational uses. These are massive undertakings involving dismantling giant buildings; taking down crumbling smokestacks; removing hundreds of tons of asbestos; shredding hundreds of tons of steel, copper and aluminum; and hauling hundreds of truckloads of debris.

photo credit Daniel Lozada, NYTimes

Then there’s site remediation to clean up hazardous and dangerous residues from decades of processing and burning coal.

Developers estimate around 20 coal-burning plants are candidates for this type of re-development; many others may be taken down as well. A quick scan indicates a plurality of plants are located in Michigan, Texas, Indiana and Tennessee. 

Once the demolition and remediation is done, it’s time to build – and not just commercial and residential projects. One of the main attributes of these plants is they are tied into the grid, making them prime locations for green energy production in the form of solar and wind farms.

From the NYT:

In Illinois alone, at least nine coal-burning plants are on track to become solar farms and battery storage facilities in the next three years. [emphasis added] Similar projects are taking shape in Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Maryland. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, two retired coal plants along the coast are being repurposed to connect offshore wind turbines to the regional electrical grids [emphasis added]

Building and operating renewable energy projects has long been cheaper than fossil fuel plants. The barrier “is not economics anymore,” said Joseph Rand, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which conducts research on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. “The hardest part is securing the interconnection and transmission access.” [which is not an issue when old coal plants are re-purposed]

Which all translates to lots and lots of very well-paid workers doing risky work for years.

What does this mean for you?

More workers’ comp premiums and claims.