History Spotloght, 1/15

It was on this day in 1559, that Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey. But who cares about her, it's also the 89th anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Flood.

Like most disasters, several factors combined to create it. For starters, the tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company at 529 Commercial Street in the North End, was poorly constructed and insufficiently tested. Basic saftey checks, such as filling the tank with water to check for leaks, were bypassed. The tank's molasses leaks were dealt with by painting the tank brown (so the leaks didn't show). In fact, it leaked so badly that neighborhood residents would stop by with a container and help themselves. Not helping matters any was a warm front that passed through the evening before raising temperatures from 2 degrees to 41 degrees, which started the fermentation process in the tank, which created carbon dioxide, which further increased the pressure on an already shaky structure. The tank itself was massive: 50 feet tall, 90 feet in diameter and holding over 2 million gallons of molasses.

At 40 minutes past noon on on January 15, 1919 neighborhood residents heard a rattling sound like a machine gun as the rivets popped, followed by a low rumbling sound, similar to a train passing by. As the tank burst, a massive wave of molasses 15 feet high and moving at 35 mph was unleashed upon the neighborhood. The wave moved with such force that girders of a nearby elevated train were broken and cars were strewn about like toys. A fire station just east of the tank was moved off its foundation and other buildings were completely demolished. 21 were killed and 150 were injured.

As the wave subsided, several blocks were left inundated in molasses at a depth of about 3 feet. People, horses and dogs struggled to get to their feet in the sticky mess and breathe while their lungs were clogged with molasses. The force of air ahead of the wave picked up a truck and tossed it into Boston Harbor.

The first responders wer 116 sailors from the nearby USS Nantucket who waded into the soup to pull out survivors. In the meantime, the Red Cross arrived and set up aid station to tend the wounded and keep people warm. After four days, the search for survivors was called off.

In the end, the cleanup took 87,000 man hours and Boston Harbor was brown (well, brown-er) until summer. The United States Industrial Alcohol Company, owner of Purity Distilling originally tried to blame a bomb planted by anarchists, but nobody was buying that. After three years of trials, USIA was found liable to the tune of $600,000 (about $6.6 million in today's dollars)

A plaque at the site reads:

On January 15, 1919, a molasses tank at 529 Commercial Street exploded under pressure, killing 21 people. A 40-foot wave of molasses buckled the elevated railroad tracks, crushed buildings and inundated the neighborhood. Structural defects in the tank combined with unseasonably warm temperatures contributed to the disaster.

Neighborhood residents say that, on hot summer nights, you can still smell molasses in the air.