Boston’s Sweet Disaster — the Molasses Flood of 1919

Photo by Clifford on Unsplash

It’s kind of laughable at first mention, but the fact is that 21 people (and apparently a number of horses) died in the Great Molasses Flood in Boston.

Molasses?

Molasses.

What happened was that a very large molasses tank burst, releasing more than two million gallons of the substance into Boston’s street at high speed. 21 people died, 150 were injured, and a lot of property damage happened. The wave hit a densely-populated area of the city. A firehouse was ripped from its foundations and nearly ended up in the harbor.

Why Was It So Bad?

We think of molasses as a slow moving thing, so it’s hard to imagine that the flood moved at 35mph.

The answer: It was being kept under pressure. The tank thus held a lot of potential energy and in the initial burst, that all turned into kinetic energy. The burst was short, but it didn’t matter to those caught in the flood.

Then, as it slowed down, people and animals became trapped in the sticky flood.

It was also cold, which of course resulted in the molasses solidifying, making it harder to rescue people. Cleanup took a while and supposedly the smell lingered for years.