Boston molasses flood civil suit12/9/2023 O’Connel, that the tank had collapsed because it was structurally weak. Since the USIA was a major military supplier (of alcohol), and according to the company, had already received threats from anarchists, they were an obvious target. Basically, according to USIA, the tank had been destroyed by enemy communists. Dolan, insisted that it was beyond question that “evilly disposed persons” were responsible for destroying the tank, and that the tank was structurally sound. Both in the trial, and in the press, debate about the cause of the disaster was rampant.īy this time, the Purity Distilling had been bought by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA). The civil preceding that followed had 119 claimants and lasted 3 years, making it the longest civil trial in Massachusetts history. There was rampant speculation about the cause. Firemen Standing in Deep Molasses After the Flood The Cause of the Great Molasses Flood The black stuff seeped out through cracks and ran down the sides of the tank.Īnd then, on January 15, 1919, it failed, horribly. The tank was never water-tight, or in this case, molasses-tight. For three years, the people of the neighborhood watched in trepidation as the tank was refilled with millions of gallons of molasses, groaning and shuddering as the weight increased up to 13,000 tons. However, during this time, industrial alcohol was in high demand because of World War I, since alcohol was used for the manufacture of munitions. The tank held shipments of Caribbean molasses that would be distilled into rum or alcohol for industrial use. Fifty feet tall and 280 feet around, it was the biggest “building” in the neighborhood. The molasses filled tank was owned by Purity Distilling Company, and sat on Commercial Street near Boston harbor, in Boston’s North End. The Aftermath of the Great Boston Molasses flood, Courtesy of Boston Public Library Why So Much Molasses? The molasses had to be pumped out of the basements of buildings. The city eventually pumped salt water from Boston harbor into the town, which, if it didn’t exactly wash it away, thinned it enough to let it flow into the harbor. At first, the city tried to wash it away using the fire hydrants, but this did no good. Residents say that on some days you can still smell it!Īs you can imagine, nobody had ever thought of how you would clean up after a huge molasses flood. In the resulting wreckage, molasses coagulated into a sticky mess which lingered for months. Bil steel trolley freight cars were crushed as if eggshells, and their piled-up cargo of boxes and merchandise minced like so much sandwich meat. Like eggshells it crushed the buildings of the North End yard of the city’s paving division…To the north it swirled and wiped out practically all of Boston’s only electric freight terminal. Then, balked by the staunch brick walls of the houses at the foot of the hill, the death-dealing mass swept back towards the water. Swirling back it sucked a modest frame dwelling (the Clougherty house) from where it nested beside the three-story brick tenements and threw it, a mass of wreckage, under the “L” structure. Thirty feet high, it smashed against the tenements on the edge of Copp’s Hill. Across the street, down the street, it rolled like a two-sided breaker at the seashore. It smote the huge steel girders of the “L” structure and bent, twisted, and snapped them, as if by the smash of a giant’s fist. Among many newspaper reports, one in the Post described the event:Ī rumble, a hiss-some say a boom and a swish-and the wave of molasses swept out. It even knocked buildings right off their foundations and crumpled rail-cars in the freight yard. You’d think molasses would flow very slowly, but survivors said that you couldn’t get away from onrushing, viscous, rumbling juggernaut. Elevated railway collapsed from flying tank debris after the great molasses flood. Many horses, cats, and dogs were also killed. Twenty-one people died from the molasses flood, and 150 were injured either from being swept up in the flood or buried in the debris of collapsing structures. The molasses poured outward through the streets, causing a wall of molasses up to 15 to 30 feet high and moving at a speed of 35 miles an hour. Metal and other debris from the tank was thrown outward, some of which cut through the girders of the elevated railway. This was not just a simple failure, it was a violent breach, often described as an explosion. It is surely one of the most bizarre disasters in American history. Just such a flood occurred in Boston, Massachusetts on January 15, 1919, when a storage tank filled with two million gallons of molasses catastrophically breached.
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