The Great Molasses Flood occurred in Boston in 1919 when a molasses tank collapsed, killing 21 people and causing extensive damage. The event marked a shift in holding businesses accountable for public harm. The tank belonged to the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which blamed anarchists for the collapse. However, it was due to structural deficiencies. The company eventually paid $600,000 to victims.
The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster and Boston Molasses Tragedy, was a major accident that occurred in Boston, Massachusetts in 1919 when a large molasses tank collapsed. Several people were killed or injured, and the damage was estimated in the millions by today’s standards. The Great Molasses flood marked the beginning of an era in US history in which businesses would be held accountable for causing public harm as a result of their operations.
The event occurred on January 15, 1919 at the Purity Distilling Company facility located in the North End neighborhood of Boston. The chemical company specialized in transforming molasses, which was a standard sweetener at the time, into rum and ethyl alcohol by the distillation process. A five-story, 50-centimeter brown metal tank waiting to be transferred to a nearby Purity facility bursts, simulating the sounds of a machine gun as its rivets fly off and unleashing a 15-million-gallon (2.3 million liters) of molasses on the street. The collapse was so severe that the ground shook. The wave traveled at 8.7 miles (35 kilometers) per hour, was up to 56 feet (15 meters) high, and covered a width of 4.57 feet (160 meters).
Buildings were uprooted from their foundations and crushed by the sheer force of the molasses wave, which was recorded at 2 tons per square foot (200 kilopascals). Twenty-one people, mostly Irish and Italian factory workers, were killed, crushed or drowned by the wave and made almost unrecognizable by the sweetening glaze. In addition, 150 people were injured and several horses lost their lives.
Alcohol distiller United States Industrial Alcohol Company (USIA), which was the owner of the tank, as well as the parent company of Purity Distilling Company, blamed the Great Molasses flood on anarchist anarchists as the culprits who blew up the tank. This theory, however, has never been confirmed. Families of the victims noted that the reservoir had been overfilled since 1915, though the USIA did nothing to address the problem.
The poor and working class population of Boston’s North End filed a class action against USIA, then one of the most powerful companies in the country, in the aftermath of the Great Molasses Flood. After five years, the Massachusetts Superior Court ruled that the tank’s collapse was due to its structural deficiencies, not an act of sabotage. USIA eventually paid US$600,000, the equivalent of nearly $7 million in 2011, to victims of the Great Molasses Flood.
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