“The tank starts leaking on Day 1,” Puleo said. Instead of filling the entire tank with water after it was finished to test for leaks, he only put in six inches of water. He told NBC News that the manager of the project, Arthur Jell, USIA’s treasurer, had “no technical experience, no architectural experience, no engineering experience.”įrom the beginning, Jell sidestepped safety precautions. Puleo explains in his book that the project was rushed from the beginning. Companies in the U.S., England, and France bought the alcohol, which they desperately needed to make dynamite, smokeless powder and other explosives used in World War I. The tank stored molasses from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies, which was then brought to a distillery in East Cambridge and turned into industrial alcohol. Industrial Alcohol (USIA) subsidiary, Purity Distilling Co., built the tank in 1915 to keep up with increasing demand for military weapons. Courtesy of Dark Tide and the Boston Fire Department Archives HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?Ī U.S. The firehouse after the Great Boston Molasses Flood in 1919. Firefighters had to spread ladders over it to prevent themselves from falling into sticky vats that were once streets. It was also a problem for rescuers who were trying to lift people out of the molasses. “As the temperature dropped, the molasses got harder and harder to move, which is a problem when you’re trying to shift rubble," Sharp said. People were trapped, with witnesses described trying to breathe while stuck, gasping for their lives and simultaneously trying to avoid inhaling too much.Ĭold weather made things worse. As molasses flooded the streets, it slowed but became thicker and stickier, and still difficult to escape. Many survivors had broken backs and fractured skulls.ĭuring the second stage of the flood, “the inertia runs out as the molasses spreads - that’s when viscosity starts to matter," Sharp said, referring to a liquid's resistance to flow. People’s bones were crushed, their bodies thrown onto buildings and train cars. “When the initial wave came through, it just pulverized everything,” Sharp said. When the tank broke and the molasses exploded, there was no outrunning it. The inertia is so much more powerful than the forces that can be moved by the viscosity.” “The fact that the molasses is extremely viscous doesn't matter for the first 60-90 seconds. When the tank ruptured, all that potential energy became kinetic energy. The tank, piled so high with molasses, stored a large amount of potential energy. “Molasses is 1.5 times heavier than water.
Sharp said the flood could be broken down into two stages, with the first called “The Tsunami.” “I found that the initial wave could have moved at that speed,” she said. Sharp decided to look into the science behind the flood, along with a team of scientists at Harvard. “One of my first questions was, is that number plausible?” she said. Nicole Sharp, a science communicator and an expert in fluid dynamics, said that when she heard the 35-mph number, she was surprised. If you're familiar with the phrase “slow as molasses,” it’s hard to make sense of the 1919 flood. Courtesy of Dark Tide and the Boston Fire Department Archives THE STICKY TSUNAMI Sailors helping with the rescue after the Great Boston Molasses Flood in 1919. By sunset, 21 people were dead, 150 were injured and the North End looked like it had been bombed. The brown wave busted windows, overturned railcars and flooded homes.
Puleo told NBC News that the tide of molasses ripped the Engine 31 Firehouse from its foundation, almost sweeping the building into the Boston Harbor. Within seconds, two city blocks were flooded. People in its direct path were immediately swallowed, drowned and asphyxiated by the notoriously viscous substance.
The wave was 2.3 million gallons, moving at 35 miles per hour, 25 feet high and 160 feet wide at its outset, rushing through the city's crowded and densely populated North End.Ī massive, 50-foot-high steel tank holding the molasses had ruptured.
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