A Sticky Situation: Deaths On The Great Molasses Flood Of 1919 Explained

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 led to a more than sticky situation. In fact, it went down in history as the longest legal case in Boston. Scientists pointed several factors resulting to this catastrophic event.

Jan. 15, 1919 marked the date that would forever be known in history as the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. A 50-foot tank from an untested five-story storage facility (Purity Distilling Co.) containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses ruptured.

The viscous molasses destroyed everything in its path, from home to buildings to lives. The sweet molasses brought about 21 deaths and more than 150 injured people in its wake, History Today detailed.

"Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage ... Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell,” a report from the Boston Post in 1919 stated, “Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was ... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise."

According to Live Science, Nicole Sharp, a fluid dynamicist and Denver-based aerospace engineer, said it is the cool temperatures that worsened the situation as it made efforts to rescue more complicated. The weather was a huge factor in making the molasses flow more slowly.

Arthur Jell, who directed that particular tank’s construction without any technical background, had his own fair share of blame for the catastrophic event. Although the tank was only built three years before, it leaked continuously throughout its lifetime.

Capitalistic tendencies of the corporate bigwigs could have prevented the molasses flood. Complaints were addressed by United States Industrial Alcohol, parent company of Purity Distilling Co., by advising that the tank be painted brown for the leaks to become less noticeable.

Sharp and her colleagues detailed their findings last Nov. 21 at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics in Portland, Oregon.