Great boston molasses flood plaque how to#

In 2014, a study was completed by the senior structural engineer of Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, a consulting firm in Massachusetts, Ronald Mayville. They found that climate and temperature also played major roles in this disaster. When the Great Molasses Flood first occurred the technology of the time limited Bostonians from ever fully piece in together exactly what went wrong the day of the flood, but in the past few years, science labs across the country have been tackling the particulars of the disaster. This haste pushed United States Industrial Alcohol to commission a cheap, slipshod storage tank that was rushed, built in the bitter cold, and simply never should have been. Ethanol was also a key ingredient in alcoholic beverages, such as beer, and while this was always profitable, with a push for a national ban on the production and consumption of alcohol looming over the country, industry was ramping up production of their brews like never before, desperate to deliver their product before it was too late. Molasses became doubly important in 1919 amidst a rise of Prohibition sentiments. A significant amount of the Purity Distillery Company’s molasses was shipped off to manufacturing plants and used in the production of dynamite and munitions. During World War I, which had ended just months before the flood, molasses gained a new importance in the United States after it was realized the the syrup could be fermented and then extracted for ethanol, a substance which is highly flammable and had become crucial in producing munitions in the war. The need for so much of the substance and its value was heavily linked to the specific time and current events of the country. The reason that Boston was home to such an enormous amount of molasses to begin with had nothing to do with sweetness or baking, but rather alcohol and weaponry. Absolutely everything was sticky and coated in a layer thick and gelatinous enough to make even moving a chore.

Great boston molasses flood plaque how to#

The disaster left the city in shambles and fumbling with how to begin to cleanup and rebuild from such a unique problem. When the molasses first settled, it was several feet high in some places. A reported twenty-five horses also died after a Public Works Department stable was engulfed. Entire homes and businesses were swiftly swept away, completely decimated.

A twenty-five foot wave of the thick, syrupy substance tore through the city, taking the lives of twenty-one Bostonians, ranging from ages ten to sixty-nine, and injuring one hundred and fifty more. When the structure, which was ninety feet in diameter and stood fifty feet tall, gave out on that winter day in 1919, the results were catastrophic. Four years prior, in 1915, a massive circular building, a silo of sorts, was erected in the city’s North End, housing a staggering 2,300,000 gallons of molasses for the Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of United States Industrial Alcohol. On January 15, 1919, a loud bang sounded and suddenly entire blocks of the city of Boston was swept up in a rushing wave of molasses.