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. 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.Ī daily newspaper in Boston reports on the flood, circa 1919. 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. Her sister was found alive in hospital days later, having suffered a stroke and disfigurement. 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. 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.At 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. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |