3/14/2023 0 Comments Great molasses flood![]() ![]() ![]() Harry Howe was on leave from the Navy for the weekend when the flood occurred. And I’m talking injuries like broken backs, fractured skulls." (Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection) "About 21 people die, 150 people injured seriously. "It collects and destroys buildings, people, domestic animals, stables - there are about 25 horses that are killed," Puleo said. So on the day of the flood, despite leaks and groans, no one anticipated that the tank was about to burst, unleashing a wave of 2.3 million gallons of molasses that would move 35 miles an hour down Commercial Street. "It was very customary for children of the North End to go and collect molasses with pails." "There were often comments made by people around the vicinity that this tank would shudder and groan every time it was full, and it leaked from day one," Puleo said. There were signs that the tank was faltering, but the people of the North End had gotten used to its instability. So there were deliveries all day long, this was a bustling, hustling kind of place." "Almost all of the shipping that left Boston to go up and down the East Coast, to go to Europe, left from this site. "This was one of the busiest commercial sites in all of Boston," Puleo said. ![]() Perched right on Boston Harbor, the tank was perfectly situated in a hub of trade activity. A plaque commemorates the Boston Molasses Flood. By the time of the flood, the war was over, and the molasses inside was expected to become rum in the last days before Prohibition. The tank was built to be a holding vessel for molasses until it could be transported to a nearby distillery, where it was converted into industrial alcohol for World War I munitions. There was a pipe right here that led to the molasses tank, and they would offload gallons of molasses into the tank." "Ships that would come up from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the West Indies would pull up right along here. "So, that green sign right there is exactly the site of the outside wall of the tank," he said. On a brisk winter day, Stephen Puleo, author of " Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919," gestured toward the spot where a tank in Boston's North End burst, releasing a tsunami of hot molasses into the streets 100 years ago, on Jan. (AP) This article is more than 4 years old. The disaster took 21 lives and injured 40. Such a mix of significantly differing temperatures produced gas and added to the air pressure within the tank, which hadn’t been able to take it.The ruins of a tank containing 2 1/2 million gallons of molasses lie in a heap after an eruption that hurled trucks against buildings and crumpled houses in the North End of Boston, on Jan. Additionally, a recent delivery of warm molasses was mixing with the cooler molasses that had been inside the tank for weeks. 15, the temperature had climbed to about 40°, increasing pressure within the tank. Two days before the explosion, the temperature was a mere 2° F. However, the ensuing court case, which lasted more than five years, decided that no act of sabotage had taken place and that structural failure was the cause of the explosion. Moreover, anarchists had bombed USIA facilities in New York several years before, and one employee reported having received a bomb threat against the tank in Boston. In fact, the Boston area had experienced 40 explosive incidents in the year leading up to the Molasses Flood. In theory, the claim was plausible, as anarchists and their dynamiting tactics were common during that time. Industrial Alcohol (USIA) corporation, which owned the Purity Distilling Company that operated the molasses tank, claimed that the explosion was not the result of substandard construction but was instead an act of sabotage perpetrated by anarchists. ![]()
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