<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> "The Washington Place Fire" An eyewitness account 00: 08: 09 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Problems playing this file? See media help . </Td> </Tr> <P> A bookkeeper on the eighth floor was able to warn employees on the tenth floor via telephone, but there was no audible alarm and no way to contact staff on the ninth floor . According to survivor Yetta Lubitz, the first warning of the fire on the ninth floor arrived at the same time as the fire itself . Although the floor had a number of exits, including two freight elevators, a fire escape, and stairways down to Greene Street and Washington Place, flames prevented workers from descending the Greene Street stairway, and the door to the Washington Place stairway was locked to prevent theft by the workers; the locked doors allowed managers to check the women's purses . The foreman who held the stairway door key had already escaped by another route . Dozens of employees escaped the fire by going up the Greene Street stairway to the roof . Other survivors were able to jam themselves into the elevators while they continued to operate . </P> <P> Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway became unusable in both directions . Terrified employees crowded onto the single exterior fire escape, which city officials had allowed Asch to erect instead of the required third staircase . It was a flimsy and poorly anchored iron structure which may have been broken before the fire . It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload, spilling about 20 victims nearly 100 feet (30 m) to their deaths on the concrete pavement below . Elevator operators Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo saved many lives by traveling three times up to the ninth floor for passengers, but Mortillalo was eventually forced to give up when the rails of his elevator buckled under the heat . Some victims pried the elevator doors open and jumped into the empty shaft, trying to slide down the cables or to land on top of the car . The weight and impacts of these bodies warped the elevator car and made it impossible for Zito to make another attempt . William Gunn Shepard, a reporter at the tragedy, would say that "I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture--the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk". Even once firefighters arrived, their ladders were only long enough to reach as high as the sixth to seventh floors . </P>

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