The Great Molasses Flood

Subtitles

On January 15, 1919 one of the strangest

and most absurd events occurred.

What would later become known as

The Great Molasses Flood took place in

the North End neighborhood of

Boston, Massachusetts.

As absurd as it may sound,

this was in fact a real world, historical event

and the story goes something like this.

January of 1919 was just like any other winter.

On January 12, it was cold with a temperature

of around 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

However, on the 13th the temperature began to rise.

On the 15th the temperature had risen to

about 41 degrees Fahrenheit, which was not too

out of the ordinary and was certainly a nice

improvement over the frigid temperatures

of the previous days.

The 15th started out just like any other day would.

To most everyone at the time, it was just another

Wednesday. But, of course, all tragedies and life

changing events happen on seemingly ordinary days.

At around 12:41 PM the residents of

North End, Boston heard a loud rumble similar

to that of a passing train. There was an elevated

railway that ran through that area, so this was

nothing out of the ordinary. That was, of course,

until it was out of the ordinary.

The sound quickly became much louder than that

of a passing train and just a split second after

the sound was heard, a 40 foot wave of some dark,

viscous liquid, flew through the neighbourhood at

over 30 miles an hour. And of course with the

high viscosity the wave was also very sticky.

This, however, did not slow the wave down,

it continued to fly through the neighbourhood

at incredible speeds. There was no time to

escape the wave, or even comprehend what

was happening. Anyone in the path of the wave,

was swept away, along with all the houses, cars,

animals, and pretty much everything else.

Many people were smashed into nearby walls

and many were swept into the nearby harbor.

This wave was not at all water, but instead a dark,

sticky, viscous liquid, known as molasses.

It might not sound like this wave would be that

much worse than water (other than the cleanup, of course)

but a wave of molasses is actually far

worse than a wave of water. You see, molasses

is around 60% more dense than the design of water,

so a wave of molasses does far more damage

than a wave of water. Not to mention the fact that

the molasses made rescue operations nearly impossible.

The Boston Post reported:

"Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and

swirled and bubbled about the wreckage...

Here and there struggled a form?whether it was animal

or human being was impossible to tell.

Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass,

showed where any life was...

Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper.

The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess

they were ensnared. Human beings

?men and women?suffered likewise."

And of course, it was not only persons

caught in the initial wave who where struggling,

but also the rescuers. The first rescuers to the scene

were 116 cadets under the direction of

Lieutenant Commander H. J. Copeland from the

nearby Massachusetts Nautical School.

Shortly after, personnel from the Boston Police,

Army, Navy, and Red Cross arrived on the scene.

The conditions were not at all optimal

and to make them yet worse, the molasses

began to cool, and thickened even more than

it was before. The increasing viscosity made it

harder and yet harder for those trying to escape the mess,

and for the rescuers trying to traverse through it.

Many of the rescuers worked through the night to find

and tend to the dozens of injured people and

their fellow exhausted rescuers. It was so hard to find

people in the mess that it took 4 days before

rescue operations ended. Although, many of the dead

had been swept out into the harbor where they were

not found until months after the event.

In total, around 150 people were injured, and 21 died.

At this point you're probably wondering where so

much molasses could come from.

Well, it all came from a large storage tank near the harbor.

Molasses was unloaded from ships, put in the storage tank,

and later transferred via pipeline to

the Purity ethanol plant in Cambridge.

During January 12 and 13, just a couple days

before the disaster, a ship had unloaded it's

supply of molasses into the tank. Since the temperatures

were rather cold, the molasses was heated to lower

it's viscosity for the transfer. On the 13th, just shortly

after the transfer was complete, many workers heard

the sound of bubbling inside the tank. It was later reported:

"The warm molasses... was mixing with the cold,

thick molasses that had been congealing inside

the tank for weeks, producing a bubbling churn

that vibrated against the tank's walls.

The men on the Commercial Street wharf heard those

walls groaning, [like they] had heard them groan many

times before, usually immediately after a delivery, but it

is unlikely that they knew that when warm and cold

molasses mix, the reaction triggers a fermentation

process that produces gas. And in a near-full tank,

that gas increases the pressure against the steel walls."

Not only was the molasses fermenting and

increasing pressure, but with the new delivery of molasses,

the tank was nearly at it's maximum capacity

"with 2.3 million gallons of molasses that reached a

height of forty-eight feet, nine inches,

and weighed 26 million pounds."

This is very likely the reason why the tank burst.

Although, it was also found that the tank had not been

built properly and even before the disaster,

it leaked molasses. In fact, it leaked so bad that

the tank was painted brown to hide the leakage.

After the disaster, the Purity Distilling Company eventually

was forced to pay for damages estimated at around $628,000

(which would be equivalent to nearly $11 million today).

Not surprisingly, the mess was a nightmare to clean up.

Cleanup crews, which of consisted of hundreds people,

used various methods including spraying seawater from a

fireboat to wash away the molasses and

also using sand to absorb it. But even with so many people,

it took months to clean the area. Rescuers, cleanup crews,

and sight-seers had tracked the molasses everywhere.

It was even reported that:

"Everything a Bostonian touched was sticky."

Even decades after the disaster, residents reported that

the area still smelled like molasses on hot summer days.

This disaster is certainly one of the most

absurd tragedies, that has ever occurred!