“Insufficient plaque for the sheer tragedy that occurred here,” reads one Google review for the marker, which boasts a rating of 4.5 stars. But there isn’t enough room to communicate all of that on a small green sign. Beyond the havoc it wreaked, the tragedy resulted in one of the state’s first class-action lawsuits, and set precedence for modern zoning laws. ![]() Two children home from school during lunchtime perished while gathering firewood. The flood hit the working-class immigrants of the neighborhood hardest, killing and injuring people like wagon drivers, paving yard laborers, blacksmiths, and unsuspecting victims inside their homes. Pieces of the exploded molasses tank knocked down elevated train tracks and crushed buildings. People caught in the clutches of the wave suffocated to death. A molasses tank explosion that sent a 15-foot-high wave of sugary sludge sweeping through Boston sounds comical, and to some, a little far-fetched. The story of the Great Boston Molasses Flood has long captured the imaginations of history lovers across the country. And if I wasn’t looking for it, I may not have seen it at all. At the moment, the small sign is the only marker honoring the Great Boston Molasses Flood, a tragedy that killed 21 people in the North End. “Boston Molasses Flood” it read in white lettering, followed by a three-sentence description of the event that occurred 100 years ago this month. I scanned the street until I found what I’ve never once spotted before: a small green sign on a stone wall, positioned about a foot or so off the ground. I was inspecting the sidewalk closely, searching for a plaque marking one of the craziest-and deadliest-disasters in Boston’s history. "All the things we now take for granted in the business - that architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at projects - all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case," explains Puleo.While strolling along Commercial Street on a recent January morning, I kept my head down. The case also completely changed the relationship between business and government. The case was historic in many ways.Īccording to Puleo, the case set the stage for future class action lawsuits and was "the first case in which expert witnesses were called to a great extent - engineers, metallurgists, architects, technical people." Immediately following the flood, 119 plaintiffs filed a civil lawsuit against U.S. Rescue efforts continued for days, and cleanup took even longer. As it spilled out, it cooled and thickened, trapping survivors in the mess. Two days before the accident, a new shipment of hot molasses had been added to the tank, so when it burst, the molasses inside might have been slightly warmer than the outside air. Supposedly, you can still smell the molasses when it gets hot enough. A lot of that potential energy that you had from stacking this thing up really high is going to turn into kinetic energy. Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer and science educator, explains: "You basically have a giant stack of something that's really heavy and as soon as you remove whatever's holding that - in this case, the walls of the tank - all of that's gonna rush out. ![]() When the company received complaints that the tank was leaking, it painted the tank brown to disguise the leaks rather than repair them.īesides the structural aspects of the tank, researchers have explored how the scientific properties of the molasses itself explain why the flood was so destructive. Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, had rushed to build it, employing an overseer who was an expert in finance, not engineering. ![]() On top of that, the steel that they used, although it was state-of-the-art of the day, we know today that it could be relatively brittle under certain circumstances." Whoever did the design failed to provide the adequate thickness of the steel. However, "one thing is very clear: it was under-designed. According to Ronald Mayville, an engineer who researches the flood in his spare time, there is no surefire reason the tank failed.
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