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At least one person died by asphyxiation hours after the accident, Sharp says. Even the Old Howard. Its sugary-sweet contents were the property of United States Industrial Alcohol, which took regular shipments of molasses from the Caribbean and used them to produce alcohol for liquor and munitions manufacturing. During the second stage of the flood, the inertia runs out as the molasses spreads thats when viscosity starts to matter," Sharp said, referring to a liquid's resistance to flow. It is now the site of a city-owned recreational complex, officially named Langone Park, featuring a Little League Baseball field, a playground, and bocce courts. Cold weather made things worse. [15] The company claimed that the tank had been blown up by anarchists[7]:165 because some of the alcohol produced was to be used in making munitions, but a court-appointed auditor found USIA responsible after three years of hearings, and the company ultimately paid out $628,000 in damages[15] ($10.6million in 2022, adjusted for inflation[16]). More recent investigations suggest several fundamental problems with the structure of the tank. Ex-Mayor John J. Fitzgerald was by now out of the picture and these workmen probably said, "More's the pity," for "Honey Fitz" never lost sight of his Irishness and seemed a darlin' man to the workers, despite all the stories of graft. I passed the site of the catastrophe recently and found that there is little to show for it. The tank was built in 1915 along Bostons waterfront on Commercial Street, opposite Copps Hill. Historical estimates said that the initial wave would have moved at 56km/h [35mph], said Sharp. Even Iver Johnson's. Its not like with an oil spill where a lot of this material is floating at the surface and can be scooped off.. If its moisture content exceeds27%, its density determined by double dilution must not be less than 79.50 Brix. A considerable amount of molasses had been stored there by the company, which used the harborside Commercial Street tank to offload molasses from ships and store it for later transfer by pipeline to the Purity ethanol plant situated between Willow Street and Evereteze Way in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Other bacteria and their kin have puzzled researchers by swimming just fine without such external accoutrements. He turned to see a five-story-high metal tank split open, releasing a massive wall of dark amber fluid. They were most probably discussing baseballBoston had won the World Series in 1918and a new film called Shoulder Arms which was Charlie Chaplin's satire on life in the trenches. Then imagine an estimated 14,000 tons of the thick, sticky fluid running wild. Speaking at the conference, Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer and author of the blog Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics said: The sun started going down and the rescue workers were still struggling to get to people and rescue them. It rises beside the conflux of the Charles River and Boston's inner harbor. Explosion Theory Favored by Expert, reported the Boston Evening Globe. The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster,[1][2][a] was a disaster that occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. [5], In 2016, a team of scientists and students at Harvard University conducted extensive studies of the disaster, gathering data from many sources, including 1919 newspaper articles, old maps, and weather reports. Although rescue equipment was quick to arrive on the scene, vehicles and rescue workers on foot could barely get through the clinging muck that filled the streets. There wasnt a whole lot that could be done for cleanup of the spill itself because molasses is very soluble, so it mixed into the water, says Grieg Steward, professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii. The most dramatic rescue took place at the Engine 31 firehouse, where several of the men from the lunchtime card game were trapped in a molasses-flooded pocket of space on the collapsed first floor. A long ensuing legal battle revealed several possible reasons for the flood. Courtesy of Boston Fire Department Archives. Industrial Alcohol paid off between $500,000 and $1,000,000. But the question has remained, why did the molasses explode as a wave and not just slowly drip out of the tank? Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. Apparently one reason the ambulances arrived so soon was that a policeman was at his corner signal box, making a call to his precinct, when he glanced down the street and saw the brown tide slithering toward him. But the fact that the water stayed brown for months suggests to Bowen that some sort of increased bacterial feeding could have happened as the temperature rose. Without Warning, Molasses Surged Over Boston 100 Years Ago Over the next several days, rescue workers continued to sift through the ruins, shooting molasses-trapped horses and recovering bodies. Conditions grew much worse that night as temperatures dropped, causing the liquid to become increasingly viscous. There were a lot of bad signs in this, said Sharp. Great Molasses Flood - Wikipedia One hundred years later, analyses have pinpointed a handful of factors that combined to make the disaster so disastrous. Updated: June 1, 2023 | Original: January 15, 2019. The accident has since become a staple of local culture, not only for the damage the flood brought, but also for the sweet smell that filled the North End for decades after the disaster. But the accident ultimately boils down to ethics, says Rossow, who has analyzed building collapses and other case studies to understand when engineering disasters are a result of negligence. In 2016, researchers released a study that placed the blame on cold temperatures. Horses werent able to run away from it. At least one USIA employee warned his bosses that it was structurally unsound, yet outside of re-caulking it, the company took little action. There was reportedly so much molasses in the harbor that the water turned brown. The trouble was that all the rescue workers, clean-up crews and sight-seers, squelching through the molasses, managed to distribute it all over Greater Boston. The first factor is that the tank may have leaked from the very first day that it was filled in 1915. A large storage tank filled with 2.3million U.S. gallons (8,700 cubic meters)[4] of molasses, weighing approximately[b] 13,000 short tons (12,000 metric tons), burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour), killing 21 people and injuring 150. Molasses, which is 1.5 times denser than water, is notoriously slow to pour. Thank you! [12] The wounded included people, horses, and dogs; coughing fits became one of the most common ailments after the initial blast. He has also written for the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker and Outside. In the end, the sticky tsunami killed 21 people and severely injured 150. As a boy, I never questioned that odor, so strong on hot days, so far-reaching when the wind came out of the east. By one estimate, Trex reports, it caused $100 million in damage in todays dollars. People reported hearing the tank whining and groaning. The bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which lives all over the placein soil, in peoples houses and in the human bodyoften encounters fluids and slimes of various kinds, whether mud or mucus. It was operated by the Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of United States Industrial Alcohol (USIA). After the wave receded, parts of the North End were submerged in pools of molasses said to be thigh-high. Leading up to the disaster, there had been a cold snap in Boston and temperatures were as low as -16C (3F). [7]:98. Because of this physical property, a wave of molasses is even more devastating than a typical tsunami. Peoples bones were crushed, their bodies thrown onto buildings and train cars. People in its direct path were immediately swallowed, drowned and asphyxiated by the notoriously viscous substance. Great Molasses Flood at 100: How Boston Disaster Made Us Safer - TIME Cookie Settings, The Real History Behind the Archimedes Dial in 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny', See Inside One of Americas Last Pencil Factories, Why Fireworks Scare Some Dogs but Not Others, Why We Set Off Fireworks on the Fourth of July, An Archaeologist's Take on What Indiana Jones Gets Rightand WrongAbout the Field. The wave was 2.3 million gallons, moving at 35 miles per hour, 25 feet high and 160 feet wide at its outset, rushing through the city's crowded and densely populated North End. Some nurses from the Red Cross dived into the molasses, while others tended to the injured, keeping them warm and feeding the exhausted workers. By the time the settlement was finally paid, the area around Commercial Street had long recovered from the multi-million-gallon molasses tsunami. Sind iverythin' you cansomethin' tirrible has happened!". ", "Nearly a century later, new insight into cause of Great Molasses Flood of 1919", "Slow as molasses? In this stage, the volume of fluid released is the most important factor determining how rapidly the front of the wave sweeps forward. They probably mentioned politics, for President Wilson was in Europe trying to get a peace treaty based on his Fourteen Points. Corrections? Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. [9][38], One of the DUKW amphibious tourist vehicles operated by Boston Duck Tours is named 'Molly Molasses'. The salt water of the harbor "cut" the molasses and eventually the welders could see the structure of the original tank to cut into it to find bodies. When enough reboiling has gone on to wrench every bit of sugar out of the molasses, the resulting viscous liquid is blackstrap, the extra-thick molasses used as an additive in cattle feed. A lorry was blasted right through a wooden fence, and a wagon driver was found later, dead and frozen in his last attitude like a figure from the ashes of Pompeii. But the Phoenix coffeehouse did not prove as permanent as the morning ritual it inspired. It would be like having a tsunami wave hit you. [44], The song "All Hands" from the album Palimpsest (2020) by Protest The Hero references the flood from the perspective of one of the victims. The big Boston tank was just about full. Its horrible in that the more tired they get its getting colder and literally more difficult for them to move the molasses, said Sharp. But it turns out that, because it was coldand because the molasses was cooling, that, if anything, that made the molasses more dangerous. Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 tells Schworm that the tank was a problem from the beginning and was never properly inspected. The other half died from injuries and infections in the following weeks. Natural Disasters & Environment Why the Great Molasses Flood Was So Deadly Why the Great Molasses Flood Was So Deadly When a steel tank full of molasses ruptured in 1919, physics and neglect. But amid the coverage of the catastrophe, no one documented any environmental impacts, nor does it seem anyone questioned the decision to dump the molasses in the harbor, Puleo says. In his book, Puleo writes, Shortly after the flood, the Boston Building Department began requiring that all calculations of engineers and architects be filed with their plans and that stamped drawings be signed. This later became standard practice across the country. In 1919, Boston had seven newspapers. Presenting the findings last weekend at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston, they said a key factor was that the viscosity of molasses increases dramatically as it cools. [21][22] The tank was also constructed poorly and tested insufficiently, and carbon dioxide production might have raised the internal pressure due to fermentation in the tank. For starters, the water here in January was substantially cooler. Sharp decided to look into the science behind the flood, along with a team of scientists at Harvard. At noon on this January day, work around the molasses tank routinely slowed as laborers took time out for their sandwiches and coffee. My boyhood association of the sweet aroma, mingled with the fragrance of coffee from the Phoenix, led me into a habit I still enjoy, though most other people seem to shun it: I invariably sweeten my first cup of early morning coffee with a teaspoonful of dark molasses. Sharp, and a team of scientists at Harvard University, performed experiments in a large refrigerator to model how corn syrup (standing in for molasses) behaves as temperature varies, confirming contemporary accounts of the disaster. Two months before, the Great War (to end all wars) had ended, and the Yankee Division, the 26th, was coming home soon. The deluge caused extensive damage and killed 21 people. The property formerly occupied by the molasses tank and the North End Paving Company became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority). There is a report that molasses even got as far as Worcester. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. And inexplicably I said, "I wish I had a bicycle.". Discover world-changing science. One can predict how easily an object or organism will move through a particular medium by calculating the relevant Reynolds number, which in this case takes into account the viscosity and density of the fluid as well as the velocity and size of the object or organism. Sweet but deadly 1919 disaster explained", "Solving a Mystery Behind the Deadly 'Tsunami of Molasses' of 1919", "Abstract: L27.00008: In a sea of sticky molasses: The physics of the Boston Molasses Flood", "Boston officials remember the Great Molasses Flood, 100 years later", "Gathering around the site of the molasses tank to remember its victims", "Old Army trucks find a home and triage", "The Great Molasses Disaster The Darkest of The Hillside Thickets", "I Survived The Great Molasses Flood, 1919", "The Boston Molasses Flood in Pop Culture", "Scenes in the Molasses-Flooded Streets of Boston", 100 years ago, Bostons North End was hit by a deadly wave of molasses, The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 was Bostons strangest disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Molasses_Flood&oldid=1157064846, Environmental disasters in the United States, Industrial accidents and incidents in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, Residential area (site of flattened Clougherty house), This page was last edited on 26 May 2023, at 01:54.

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