Great molasses flood remembered
Library exhibit chronicles 1919 disaster
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Photographs in the exhibit show the destruction caused when a molasses tank burst in Boston's North End in 1919.
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BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Danny O'Brien looked at a photograph of firefighters knee-deep in molasses trying to rescue people trapped in a collapsed firehouse, and remembered his grandfather's tales of sticky horror.
"Those stories were something ... horses stuck in this sea of molasses, a lot of cars, people stuck, houses smashed to pieces," said O'Brien, looking through a Boston Public Library exhibit commemorating the 85th anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood, which killed 21 people and injured 150.
His grandfather lived in the city's North End, where on January 15, 1919, a gigantic steel vat exploded, spewing 2.3 million gallons of molten molasses. Thirty-foot waves of gooey liquid plowed through the streets, catching men, women, horses and vermin in its sticky flow, crushing freight cars, wagons and automobiles and reducing entire buildings to broken planks of wood.
"They were smelling it for years after that," said O'Brien, whose grandfather volunteered to help with the months-long cleanup.
The exhibit "Molasses Flood: The 1919 North End Disaster," contains photographs and newspaper accounts of the devastating flood that paved the way for more stringent construction safety standards across the nation. It runs until the end of January.
The tank, 50 feet high and 240 feet around, was built in 1915, just as the demand for molasses -- used to produce industrial alcohol for ammunition as well as rum -- was skyrocketing at the peak of World War I.
Its site on the waterfront was convenient for delivery ships coming from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies.
But the tank, built in a hurry with faulty design, was at the edge of the city's most densely-populated neighborhood, the North End, where politically-inactive Italian immigrants had little clout, said Stephen Puleo, the author of "Dark Tide," a book about the flood released in September.
The tank leaked constantly, worrying employees and neighbors. But in their rush to keep up with demand, company officials just repainted the tank in the same color as the leaking molasses.
'A muffled roar'
About 2.3 million gallons of molasses poured out of the tank, destroying the steel support of an elevated train bridge and knocking over a fire station.
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In 1919 the war had just ended and Prohibition was looming. Purity Distilling, wanting to make a last batch of alcohol before it was banned, dumped a large shipment of molasses into the tank on January 14, filling it to near capacity. Warm molasses in the tank mixed with cold molasses from the new shipment, starting fermentation and creating gases that pushed on the tank's weak walls, according to Puleo's book.
Just after noon the next day, nearby workers and neighbors heard a deep rumble.
"A muffled roar burst suddenly upon the air," read a Boston Herald story displayed in the library exhibit. "Mingled with the roar was the clangor of steel against steel and the clash of rending wood.
"Spurting high into the air and in far reaching spread, were great ribbons of thick-brown fluid. The huge tossing geyser of molasses settled to be-plaster the outer walk of the neighborhood outside the destroying force of the explosion, sink into big pools on the flat roofs and to inundate in an adhesive, the streets, alleys and debris," read the newspaper account.
A one-ton piece of steel from the vat flew into a trestle of elevated railroad tracks, causing the tracks to buckle. Two children collecting firewood and dripping molasses near the tank disappeared under the fast-spreading liquid.
The force of the molasses ripped a firehouse from its foundation, sending the second floor crashing into the first and trapping a stonecutter and several firefighters underneath. One drowned.
The property damage, including a leveled commercial warehouse yard, was easily more than $1 million.
Stricter safety standards
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Julie Goetze of Cambridge, Massachusetts, looks at photos in the exhibit.
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In the lawsuit that followed -- a combination of 119 separate legal claims -- Purity's parent company, United States Industrial Alcohol Co., claimed Italian anarchists from the neighborhood had blown up the tank with dynamite.
That tactic failed. USIA ended up paying almost $650,000 to settle the claims. Considered enormous at the time, the settlement forced fast-flourishing industries in Boston to impose stricter safety standards, and the flood's cause and effects contributed to a politically active Italian-American voice.
"Citizenship shortly after the trial in the North End soared," Puleo said. "The flood was a catalyst for that. They realized they needed to take an active role in what was happening in their neighborhood."
The Boston Building Department tightened its regulations after the flood, including requiring engineers and architects to sign stamped drawings and new engineering certification laws that eventually became standard across the country.
Julie Goetze, 66, of Cambridge, stared in wonder at the library exhibit's pictures.
"What a sticky mess. Can you imagine a tidal wave like that bearing down on you or wading in all that?" she said. "It was a disaster, an odd one, a fascinating one, but a horrible disaster."
Copyright 2004 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
