NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Boston molasses disaster

The Boston Molasses Disaster, also known as the Great Molasses Flood or The Great Boston Molasses Tragedy, occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. A large molasses tank burst and a wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150. The event has entered local folklore, and residents claim that on hot summer days the area still smells of molasses.^[1] Image File history File links BostonMolassesDisaster. ... Image File history File links BostonMolassesDisaster. ... is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Categories: Stub | Boston neighborhoods ... Boston redirects here. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Molasses or treacle is a thick syrup by-product from the processing of the sugarcane or sugar beet into sugar. ...

Disaster

The disaster occurred at the Purity Distilling Company facility on January 15, 1919, one day before the 18th Amendment (which prohibited alcohol production) was ratified. January 15, 1919 was an unusually warm day. At the time, molasses was the standard sweetener in the United States. Molasses can also be fermented to produce ethanol, which is used in making liquor and was a key component in the manufacturing of munitions. The stored molasses was awaiting transfer to the Purity plant situated between Willow Street and what is now named Evereteze Way in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Image File history File links File links The following pages link to this file: Boston molasses disaster Categories: U.S. history images ... Image File history File links File links The following pages link to this file: Boston molasses disaster Categories: U.S. history images ... This company is responsible for the Boston Molasses Flood. ... is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Amendment XVIII in the National Archives Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol. ... The term Prohibition, also known as A Dry Law, refers to a law in a certain country by which the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or illegal. ... is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... For other uses, see Fermentation. ... Grain alcohol redirects here. ... Spirits redirects here. ... Materiel (from the French for material) is the equipment and supplies in Military and commercial supply chain management. ... Location in Middlesex County in Massachusetts Coordinates: , Country State County Middlesex Settled 1630 Incorporated 1636 Government - Type Mayor-City Council - Mayor Kenneth Reeves (D) Area - City 7. ...

At 529 Commercial Street, a huge molasses tank 50 ft (15 m) tall, 90 ft (27 m) in diameter and containing as much as 2,300,000 US gal (8,700,000 L) collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed there was a loud rumbling sound like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by.^[2]

The collapse unleashed an immense wave of molasses between 8 and 15 ft (2.5 to 4.5 m) high, moving at 35 mph (56 km/h) and exerting a pressure of 2 ton/ft² (200 kPa).^[3] The molasses wave was of sufficient force to break the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and lift a train off the tracks. Nearby, buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 feet. By 1925, streetcars were gone from most downtown streets. ... The Atlantic Avenue Elevated outside South Station Map of the Atlantic Avenue Elevated (at right) and related lines The Atlantic Avenue Elevated was an elevated railway around the east side of downtown Boston, Massachusetts, providing a second route for the Boston Elevated Railways Main Line (now the Orange Line... For other uses, see Train (disambiguation). ...

The Boston Globe reported that people "were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet." Others had debris hurled at them from the rush of sweet-smelling air. A truck was picked up and hurled into Boston Harbor. Approximately 150 were injured; 21 people and several horses were killed — some were crushed and asphyxiated by the molasses. The wounded included people, horses, and dogs; coughing became one of the biggest problems after the initial blast. The Boston Globe (and Boston Sunday Globe) is the most widely circulated daily newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts and New England. ... Categories: Stub | Massachusetts geography | Boston ... Asphyxia is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body. ...

Aftermath

First to the scene were 116 sailors from the lightship USS Nantucket training ship that was docked nearby. They ran several blocks toward the accident. They worked to keep the curious from getting in the way of the rescuers while others entered into the knee-deep sticky mess to pull out the survivors. Soon the Boston police, Red Cross, Army and other Navy personnel arrived. Some nurses from the Red Cross dived into the molasses while others tended to the wounded, keeping them warm, and made hot coffee as well as keeping the exhausted workers fed. Many of these people worked through the night. The injured were so numerous that doctors and surgeons set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Rescuers found it difficult to make their way through the syrup to help the victims. It took four days before they stopped searching for victims; many dead were so glazed over in molasses, they were hard to recognize. Two who could not be identified were found on the fourth day. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (874x742, 175 KB) This map was drawn by User:IMeowbot, based on official City of Boston, Massachusetts maps published in 1895 and 1915, adding data from published accounts and deduced from photos of the Boston molasses disaster. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (874x742, 175 KB) This map was drawn by User:IMeowbot, based on official City of Boston, Massachusetts maps published in 1895 and 1915, adding data from published accounts and deduced from photos of the Boston molasses disaster. ... LV-11 (origonaly British lightship Trinity House) is docked in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as Breeveertien serving as a restaurant. ... The Lightship Nantucket was the name given to the lightvessel which marked the hazardous Nantucket Shoals in Massachusetts. ... Current BPD Uniform Patch The Boston Police Department (BPD) has the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the city of Boston, Massachusetts. ... The Anarchist Black Cross was originally called the Anarchist Red Cross. The band Redd Kross was originally called Red Cross. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The Army is the branch of the United States armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ...

Cleanup

It took over 87,000 man hours to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes.^[4] The harbor ran brown until summer. Local residents brought a class-action lawsuit, one of the first held in Massachusetts, against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which had bought Purity Distilling in 1917. In spite of the company's attempts to claim that the tank had been blown up by anarchists (because some of the alcohol produced was to be used in making munitions) it ultimately paid out $600,000 in out-of-court settlements (at least $6.6 million in 2005 dollars).^[5] A man-hour or person-hour[1], [2] is the amount of work performed by an average worker in one hour. ... A cobblestone-covered street Cobblestones are stones used in the pavement of early streets. ... In law, a class action is an equitable procedural device used in litigation for determining the rights of and remedies, if any, for large numbers of people whose cases involve common questions of law and fact. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Anarchist redirects here. ...

United States Industrial Alcohol did not rebuild the tank. The property became a yard for the Boston Elevated Railway (predecessor to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) and is currently the site of a city-owned baseball field. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is a body politic and corporate, and a political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts [2] formed in 1964 to finance and operate most bus, subway, commuter rail and ferry systems in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area. ... This article is about the sport. ...

The smell supposedly lingered for many years; according to local folklore, molasses left from this disaster can still be smelled on hot days.^[1] This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Causes

The cause of the accident is not known with certainty, but the company was found liable and paid damages. ^[6]

More likely are the several factors that occurred on that day and the previous days may have contributed to the disaster. The tank was poorly constructed and insufficiently tested. Due to fermentation occurring within the tank, carbon dioxide production may have raised the pressure inside the tank. The rise in the local temperatures that occurred over the previous day also would have assisted in the building of this pressure. Records show that the air temperature rose from 2°F to 41° F (-17°C to 4°C) over that period. The failure occurred from a manhole cover near the base of the tank, and it is possible that a fatigue crack grew here to criticality. The hoop stress is greatest near the base of a filled, cylindrical tank. The tank had only been filled to capacity 8 times since it was built a few years previously, putting the walls under an intermittent cyclical load. For other uses, see Fermentation. ... Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. ... In materials science, fatigue is the progressive, localised, and permanent structural damage that occurs when a material is subjected to cyclic or fluctuating strains at nominal stresses that have maximum values less than (often much less than) the static yield strength of the material. ... Hoop stress is mechanical stress applied in a direction perpendicular to the radius of the item in question. ...

An inquiry after the disaster revealed that Arthur Jell, who oversaw the construction, neglected basic safety tests, such as filling the tank with water to check for leaks. When filled with molasses, the tank leaked so badly that it was painted brown to hide the leaks. Local residents collected leaked molasses for their homes.

Based on the date of the accident, some have claimed that the tank may have been overfilled so that the owners could produce as much ethanol for liquor as possible before Prohibition came into effect. But the 18th Amendment, enacting Prohibition, did not become law until more than a year later, and the Volstead Act did not ban the production of industrial alcohol, so these claims would seem to be groundless. The term Prohibition, also known as A Dry Law, refers to a law in a certain country by which the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or illegal. ... Amendment XVIII in the National Archives Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol. ... The Volstead Act is the popular name for the National Prohibition Act (1919). ...

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Park, Edwards (24 November 2004). "Eric Postpischil's Molasses Disaster Pages, Smithsonian Article". Eric Postpischil's Domain 14 (8): 213-230. Smithsonian Institute. Retrieved on 2006-12-16.
^ Great Molasses Flood. Massachusetts foundation for the Humanities. Retrieved on 2006-12-16.
^ The Great Molasses Flood of 1919. The Ooze. Retrieved on 2006-12-16.
^ ^a ^b Puleo, Stephen, “Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919”, page 98. Beacon Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8070-5021-0
^ Was Boston once literally flooded with molasses?. The Straight Dope. The Chicago Reader. Retrieved on 2006-12-16.
^ Robert Knox (11 January 2004). "The untold story of Boston's Great Molasses Flood". The Boston Globe. Retrieved on 2006-12-16.

is the 328th day of the year (329th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 11th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

Coordinates: 42°22′07.1″N, 71°03′20.7″W Yankee (ISSN 0044-0191) is a magazine published by Yankee Publishing Inc. ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...

Contents