Deitsch Textile Corp.

Description

A fire erupted in a six story warehouse operated by Deitsch Textile Corp. that killed one and injured 19 others. On the day of the fire, a shipment of elastic material was delivered to the warehouse. The material was loaded onto the freight elevator by Logan, together with coworkers Gerald Williams and Raymond Stanley. The foreman, Baruch Scher, directed Stanley and Logan to take the material up to the sixth floor and begin storing it on that floor. Shortly thereafter, one of the Deitsch brothers began yelling 'fire' to employees on the first floor and everyone on that floor evacuated. When Stanley and Logan learned of the fire, they went to a sixth floor window to get some air. Scher yelled for them to go to the roof, but they went to the fifth floor in the interior staircase and stayed at that location because the smoke prevented them from seeing down the staircase or going any further. They were unable to open a window on the fifth floor so Stanley broke it with his hands, cutting himself. Two firemen ascended a ladder and pulled Staney out of the window. Logan, however, was stuck in the steel window frame and was unconscious; he had no pulse. After 5-10 minutes, the firemen freed Logan from the frame and pulled him out. CPR was applied but Logan did not respond. He was taken to a hospital but nothing could be done for him. Over 100 firemen were required to bring the fire, which burned for several days, under control. The investigation found that bales of cloth were blocking access to fire escapes. Employees had received no instructions about what to do in the event of a fire. The fire marshal that inspected after the incident said he could recall only one sign about what to do in the case of a fire. There were no lighted exit signs on the premises, and the fifth and sixth floors contained no overhead lights. Fireproof self-closing doors had been propped open and rendered inoperable. The door to the outside at the bottom of the stairway had been chained and locked from the outside. The fire marshal was unable to ascertain the cause of the fire, but concluded that the open shafts, stairwells, and elevator doors immensely aided the acceleration and spread of the fire. No inspection of the warehouse had occurred prior to the fire because the fire department listed the warehouse as vacant. The warehouse was equipped with a standpipe system but it had deteriorated to a state of uselessness; Zalman Deitsch and the corporation had been notified by the fire department in 1976 and 1978 that the system had to be put into operating condition.

Prosecutors

District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman