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!