"Here's why you should watch a new documentary about a century-old fire in which 146 people died: because it's just as much about the America where that could happen.

Jamila Wignot's "Triangle Fire" is the first of two new documentaries produced for the 100th anniversary of the March 25, 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist fire that remained New York's worst building disaster until Sept. 11.

HBO's new Triangle production starts March 21. This "American Experience" doesn't underplay the fire itself or the tragedy of the mostly young immigrant workers who were trapped on the ninth floor of a Greenwich Village building by an inferno that finished its deadly work in less than 20 minutes.

Crowds gathered and firemen rushed to the scene. The rescue ladders of the day, stocked to fit the low buildings of an earlier century, extended only six floors."