![]() ![]() They had willfully failed to carry out their civic obligation of keeping the city’s residents safe. The US Industrial Alcohol was found guilty of causing $100 million worth of damages to the city of Boston (in today’s money). Ogden stressed, “‘The general impression of the erection and maintenance of the tank is that of an urgent job … I believe and find that the high primary stresses, the low factor of safety, and the secondary stresses, in combination, were responsible for the failure of the tank.” Who Was To Blame?Ī verdict on who was responsible took three years, finally arriving in 1923 after the city’s longest court case. Children from the area were known to come by and fill their cups with the sweet molasses that oozed from the tank’s leaks.īoston appointed attorney Hugh W. The staff at the fuel station were apparently aware of these warning flags. Mayville’s investigation revealed that, in additional to the other problems, the tank’s rivets were defective. So, when the tank was overfilled, early cracks occurred around these rivet holes. The Boston Globe archives By Christopher Gavin JanuWhen a 50-foot-tall storage tank ruptured and poured millions of gallons of molasses onto the streets of Boston’s North End 100. Ronald Mayville, a structural engineer with the Massachusetts consulting company Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, launched a further investigation in 2004. Unfortunately, this was not the case on January 15th. Molasses is 1.5 times denser than water, but the force of gravity acting on the liquid resulted in it picking up speed frighteningly quickly. If one thinks of the speed at which molasses moves when poured from a bottle, one thinks of a sticky, slow-moving liquid. Some residents became engulfed in rubble and imprisoned by molasses, putting their lives in jeopardy. The viscous molasses entirely flooded the surrounding area, which was mostly made up of Irish and Italian immigrant households. It is surely one of the most bizarre disasters in American history. ![]() ![]() The tank, which was near the harbor (a prime position for delivery and collection) was itself obliterated in seconds under the thundering pressure of the escaping liquid. Just such a flood occurred in Boston, Massachusetts on January 15, 1919, when a storage tank filled with two million gallons of molasses catastrophically breached. A 2 million gallon (7.6 million liter) molasses tank ruptured on January 15th, 1919, spilling its contents all over Commercial Street in Boston’s North End. The Great Molasses Disaster, often known as “The Big Day,” was one of the strangest calamities to ever strike Boston, but sadly also one of the most devastating. What would you do if a tsunami of sticky molasses swept through your house, destroying everything in its path? What happens when a breakdown in ethics collides with a desire to make money quickly? When the molasses disaster struck Boston in 1919, residents witnessed it first-hand. ![]()
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