For over a century, the worst fires in New York City history have claimed the lives of immigrants.
Sunday’s fire was the city’s deadliest since 1990, when arson at an unlicensed Bronx nightclub killed 87 people, mostly Honduran and Central American immigrants.
The Happy Land Social Club inferno — about a mile from the Twin Parks North West building — was the deadliest in the city since the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in Manhattan, where 146 young mostly Jewish and Italian seamstresses perished.
These historic fires parallel immigrant life in the city.
“Those who are most vulnerable, AND LEAST VALUED, live and work in precarious situations often under conditions where legal and regulatory enforcement is lax. The law, that is building and fire code, is insufficient as well as often poorly enforced, and this is the case today in the Bronx and it was as well in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.” (CNN)
ARE THEIR LIVES LESS VALUABLE THAN OURS?
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