![]() He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his four sisters staring at him. He heard his mother call his name and couldn't answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. A 1983 article for Smithsonian Magazine describes the events:Īnthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. On top of the people who were killed or injured, dogs and horses also got caught in the melee. Of the 21 people who perished in the incident, many of them drowned in the sticky wave. The smell of brown sugar filled the air as bystanders found themselves stuck in the viscous flood. A truck was thrown into Boston Harbor, windows were smashed out, and the surrounding blocks were turned to rubble. The company argued that Italian anarchist groups blew up the tank.According to the Boston Globe, people who were closest to the explosion were picked up by the wave just like they would be in the ocean and pushed away like so much debris. They argued that the tank was too thin and poorly built. It took months to recover all bodies.Ī class action lawsuit arose from the flood, Dorr v United States Industrial Alcohol Company, with 119 plaintiffs including families of victims and injured parties. Photograph: Boston Athenaeumįor weeks, farmers from neighboring towns carted away the molasses. A daily newspaper in Boston reports on the flood, circa 1919. ![]() The Boston Evening Post described how an elderly Italian man, George Kakavis, spent days watching crews sift through the molasses, timber and debris in his “banana storage” cellar, in order to find $4,400 he had squirreled away in a cigar box. A week later, the body of a child was found behind a freight train. One firefighter was in an 18in crawl space, trying to keep his head above the molasses. The firehouse was knocked off its foundation, burying the men. Several tradesmen were sitting at the Engine 31 firehouse playing cards and eating lunch. A large storage tank filled with 2. Her sister was found alive in hospital days later, having suffered a stroke and disfigurement. A Molasses Tank Burst, Claiming 21 Lives, Injuring 150 Bizarre Buffet A Podcast Of All You Can Eat Weird The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster,123 was a disaster that occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North Endneighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. When she woke up, the entire building was gone. She heard a loud sound, she later testified, adding: “It knocked me down and tipped the tub over me.” Her jaw was broken. Seventy-eight-year-old Elizabeth O’Brien had walked out of her Commercial Street home, where she had been speaking with her sister about a tag sale, in order to do some washing. A 15ft wave of syrup rushed over Commercial Street and against buildings at 35mph, killing 21 people and injuring 150. Injured, completely covered in molasses, he managed to grab a ladder thrown to him by a foreman. He was carried 35ft before slamming against a door. The molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards He ran toward the harbor, only to be overtaken by a wave of molasses. According to court transcripts, he saw an electric railway car swinging towards him, along with bottles and freight boxes. Isaac Yetton was hauling a load of automobile inner tubes into a shed when he heard a snap. Two days later, parts of the metal tank ripped though trusses of the elevated train track, 20ft below. On 13 January, it had been filled almost to capacity. The tank was built in 1915 to accommodate increased wartime demand. ![]() Owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, the molasses had been brought to the city from the Caribbean, then piped from the harbor to the vat through 220ft of heated piping. ![]() ![]() The Boston Evening Transcript later described it as “a deep rumble.” Study reveals why so many met a sticky end in Boston's Great Molasses FloodĪt around 1pm on 15 January 1919, a 50ft-tall steel holding tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End ruptured, sending 2.3m gallons of molasses pouring into the neighborhood. For bystanders, the first clue something was wrong was a sound different from the usual thrum of the overhead train. ![]()
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