I can't let today go by without writing of the Great Boston Molasses Disaster, which happened 83 years ago today. Here's is Zeitler's account:
On January 15, 1919, an unseasonably warm day in Boston, tragedy struck. Neither this Massachusetts city nor any other has ever experienced a disaster quite like it. Around noon, the molasses tank located near North End Park, designed to hold up to 2.5 million gallons of molasses (one and a half times as heavy as water), burst, unleashing a torrent of sticky goo on the unexpecting community. Within minutes, businesses and houses were destroyed. A giant wave of sweetness unfurled its wrath on the city as a thirty-foot wall traveling with a speed of thirty-five miles per hour. The incredible force of two tons per square foot was enough to knock the firehouse on its side and bend the supports under the local elevated train. People were engulfed despite attempts to outrun or swim the flood. In total, the disaster took the lives of twenty-one people and left 150 injured.
Cleanup crews spent months attempting to remove the remnants of the sticky flood, eventually quitting when they realized the once-sweet smell of molasses would continue to linger for months longer. It took weeks just to find all the dead; the mothers crushed under their own houses, the children caught unaware in their own backyards, and the working man swallowed while enjoying the weather and perhaps discussing the possibility of Prohibition on his lunch break. The Boston Harbor was stained brown for over half of a year. This was not an event Boston would soon forget.
According to the memories of this Bostonian, printed in Smithsonian, on summer days the North End still smelled of molasses decades later. Also worth reading is this article from a 1965 Yankee Magazine. There's an article on the Wikipedia on the disaster too. On this page an engineer discusses why the accident happened, and how it increased government oversight of building safety. So perhaps some good came of this deadly, sticky day.
| Boston | Molasses | Food | 1910s | Disasters |
