The Great Molasses Flood of 1919

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Great Molasses Flood. Despite its absurd-sounding name, the flood was a grave and tragic event for the city of Boston. Shortly after 12 noon on January 15, 1919, a massive storage tank burst and sent a deadly wave of molasses flooding across two city blocks in Boston’s North End. By the time the molasses came to a stop, 21 people had died and more than 100 had suffered serious injuries.

The flood likely resulted from a design flaw that made the storage tank vulnerable to temperature fluctuations. The Purity Distilling Company and its parent corporation, United States Industrial Alcohol, paid little heed to safety. They built a poorly constructed tank in the middle of a busy wharf district. The owners also had advance notice of trouble. The tank leaked so much that neighborhood children frequently came by to taste the molasses streaming down the sides of the structure. Months before the disaster, the foreman repeatedly warned management that the tank could explode, but his superiors brushed aside his concerns. As gases built up within the tank, its walls began to vibrate ominously. When the tank finally erupted, the wave of molasses that roared out of it weighed 20 million pounds, stood 25 feet high, and moved at 35 miles per hour. No one in its path had a chance.

After the tragedy, the company insisted that anarchists had blown up the tank. But the lack of damage to the tank’s concrete foundation belied the notion that a bomb caused the disaster. When 119 plaintiffs filed lawsuits against the company, the Massachusetts Superior Court appointed an auditor to hear the evidence and issue preliminary findings. In a scathing report, the auditor blamed the tragedy on structural defects in the tank’s design. He concluded that:

“there was sufficient evidence of trouble available to a reasonably competent management to cause it to investigate and see whether something ought to be done in the interest of common safety. . . . [Yet] nothing was done by the [company’s] administration . . . . [A] proper regard for the appalling possibility of damage to persons and property contained in the tank in case of accident demanded a higher standard of care in inspection from those in authority.”

The company ultimately settled out of court. It paid the plaintiffs $628,000, roughly equivalent to $9 million in 2018, a fairly modest amount for the scale of the tragedy the company’s negligence had caused. 

Stephen Puleo told the history of the flood in his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.  As he explains, Boston’s disaster

“influenced the adoption of engineering certification laws in all states, as well as the requirement that all plans for major structures be sealed by a registered professional engineer before a municipality or state would issue a building permit. . . . [T]he Boston molasses flood did for building construction regulations nationwide what a subsequent Boston disaster, the great Coconut Grove nightclub fire, did for fire code laws.”

The centennial is getting a remarkable amount of coverage. Over the weekend the Washington Post published an article on the tragedy as did the Boston Globe today. Earlier this month Pacific Standard published a piece on how the Molasses Flood encouraged stricter regulatory policies. In addition, Smithsonian Magazine republished a 1983 article on the disaster written by Edwards Park, a longtime Smithsonian contributor who grew up in the North End. Park noted that for years after the disaster “[o]ne could discern throughout much of downtown Boston, and especially around the North End, the unmistakable aroma of molasses.”

Comments

[Vernon Demerest III, Managing Parnter. Demerestt & Bakersfeld]

Today's billboard and TV hustlers would have put them out of business like they did to Cessna and Piper during the 80s and now Johnson's.

[Jared]

Slow news day?

[The Law Offcies of Kavanaugh Thomas, LLC, PC, LTD, Chartered, AV Rated]

^^^Jared, not for folks in Boston on January 15, 1919. Their City became a giant IHOP.