Molasses flood drivers#

According to Stephen Puleo, regulations stipulating that engineers needed to sign and seal plans, building inspectors needed to examine projects, and that architects needed to show their work all came as a result of Boston's molasses flood. The tragedy of Boston's molasses flood led to great changes in the way the United States regulated industries. In 1925, a court-appointed auditor ruled that the negligence by the tank's owners was to blame for the tank's collapse and the loss of life and property. An initial inquiry and a later class-action lawsuit revealed the structural instability of the tank. Though locals had observed the structural issues with the molasses tank, the tank's owners initially blamed an anarchist plot to bomb the tank. The below photos of the cleanup process show the extent of the destruction and the difficulties encountered of cleaning the area. The Engine 31 fireboat, who's firehouse had been destroyed in the flood, was key in the cleanup efforts. City workers finally realized that saltwater broke down the molasses and began spraying the area with water pumped in from the harbor. Molasses coated the wreckage making it almost impossible to move fragments of building and vehicles. You can read about each of the victims in this article.Ĭleaning up the molasses and debris in the North End was a difficult process. However, the deceased also included Pasquale Iantosca and Maria Distasio, two 10-year-olds who had been out enjoying the unseasonably warm day, and George Layhe, an Engine 31 fireman who had reportedly just gone to bed before the molasses hit his firehouse.

Molasses flood drivers#

Most of the deceased were laborers and drivers working at the North End Paving Yard and Copps Hill Wharf. Despite heroic efforts, the molasses killed 21 people and injured 150. Rescuers, including the Boston Police Department, cadets from the USS Nantucket, docked nearby, and the Red Cross, rushed to the scene. The crumpled pieces of the tank littering the debris field showed the force of the molasses wave.

It knocked an Elevated train off of its tracks, crushed buildings, moved a firehouse and other buildings off their foundations, and suffocated both humans and animals. The wave of molasses rushed through the North End at about 35 miles per hour. On January 15, 1919, a combination of the tank's shoddy construction, a sudden temperature change, and a large new shipment of molasses resulted in a rupture of the tank's walls. Furthermore, the chemical composition of the tank's walls made them vulnerable to cracking. Structural engineers later reported that the tank's walls were far too thin to hold the heavy molasses that the tank stored. When locals complained that they could see the molasses seeping out at the tank's seams, Purity Distilling painted the tank brown, to disguise the oozing molasses. According to author Stephen Puleo, North End children collected pails of the sticky, sweet molasses. Though the tank had only been built a few years earlier in 1915, local residents knew that it leaked.