It was an unseasonably warm day in Boston on January 15th, 1919. Being a Wednesday, the industrial heavy North End was buzzing with the normal sights and sounds of early 20th century commerce. Because it was so warm, spirits were high on the streets. Just two days previous, the temperature had been just above zero. Many had an extra skip in their step and held optimism’s flame for an early spring.
But trouble was brewing above 529 Commercial Street in the form of a 50 foot high cast iron tank filled with 2.5 million gallons of crude molasses. At about 12:40 PM, the tank began to rupture with a loud rumble. Sounds of multiple pops and cracks, described by some witness like that of a machine gun, were heard as rivets shot free of the tank. The ground shook as if a train were passing by.
As the tank collapsed, an immense wave molasses 15 feet high and moving as fast as 35 miles an hour flooded the surrounding streets. The wave had sufficient force to crush the girders of a nearby elevated railway track, plunging a train car off the track and onto the street below. Nearby buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Caught unawares, 22 people were killed and 150 were injured by the river of sweet-smelling, sticky molasses.
Purity Distilling, who owned the tank, quickly blamed sabotage minded anarchists for the disaster. However, the subsequent investigation ruled that the tank failed due to faulty maintenance and an abnormal buildup of carbon dioxide pressure caused by the significant swing in temperature over the preceding days.
It took two weeks and over 87,000 work hours to remove the molasses from the affected cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles and homes. The nearby harbor was still brown with molasses until summer.
Old-timers still claim that on hot summer days a faint, sickly sweet odor wafts up from streets of the North End — the stench of ancient molasses.
87000 workers! Maybe Obama can flood an entire state to help the unemployment problem.
Ha, crazy story! Wow, 22 dead…Honestly I can think of worse ways to go. I was on the highway years ago when a truck full of meat processing liquids started to bust open. I was behind and saw some drips starting to fly off the back end, they got on my hood and burned freaking marks into my paint. I got out of there just in time before the inevitable, the people behind me were not so lucky. At least no one died.
Great story, thanks for sharing!
Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses. — Unknown
Health benefits of molasses include the lowering of blood pressure and the prevention of cramps in muscles. Maybe use it instead of gel during a triathlon?
Sweet sassy molassy. 35mph molasses, must have been hot. I still use the phrase slow as molasses but I don’t think it originated from this incident.
My questions would be – why do you need 2.5M GA of Molasses in the first place? Was 1M GA container just too small?
Interesting tidbit of history.
Wow. 22 killed by mole asses…..
I wonder if they would have used the bladder that Kramer (Seinfeld) invented if none of this would have ever happened.
35 mph is just crazy fast for a substance as slow as molasses. The weight of that must have been tremendous and I wonder how far away from its epicenter it went. Being sticky it would have had to slow itself down but at what point did it stop. 1 mile away? 3 miles away?
I have to admit that I googled this because I thought you were making it up. One of the articles I read said the tank leaked so badly that kids would come and fill jars with the drips, and when employees expressed concerns, they just painted the tanks brown so the leaks wouldn’t show.
Crazy! I had to google it also – thought you were making it up:)
Kind of cool you can still smell it when the conditions are right. If the workers worked 12 hour shifts for 14 straight days, 518 people did the clean up. If the workers worked 10 hours/day, 6 days/week for two weeks, they had 725 workers. That is quite a sticky crew.
I just keep coming back to the saying… Slower than molasses in January. I wonder if it would have been worse if it had been colder or warmer out? That is such a weird tragedy.
Curses! I was keeping that idea for a post in my back pocket for a rainy day. And the Great Chicago Fire has been blogged to death. I’m not sure Franz Reichelt and his parachute overcoat is going to have quite the impact with my reader(s).