The strangest disasters..the molasses flood in Boston caused destruction and loss of life in 1919..and thus the disaster occurred

Weather of Arabia - In one of the strangest human-caused disasters in the last century, a massive amount of molasses flooded Boston in 1919, killing 21 people and injuring 150 others, so how did the disaster happen?

The story of the molasses tank explosion disaster

A huge steel tank containing 2.3 million gallons (8.7 million liters) of molasses, a huge amount equivalent to 3.5 Olympic swimming pools, was a well-known landmark in Boston's North End, in the United States, surrounded by a playground, a fire station and private homes.

The tank contained molasses imported from the West Indies intended to be turned into industrial ethanol by the American Industrial Alcohol Company, which was selling it for use in munitions for the Great War.

(image source BBC)

The tank was built a little hastily, but it remained quiet for four years since its construction, and on January 15, 1919, at 12:40 in the afternoon, when everyone was doing their usual business, the tank exploded, and accompanied by a strong sound like machine-gun fire, the explosion came without the slightest warning Once the low, rumbling sound was heard, no one had a chance to escape, and a 25-foot (7.5 m) high wall of molasses rushed away from the collapsed tank.

This wave of molasses flattened buildings, drenched people, and crashed into railroad tracks so hard that metal collapsed, like a tsunami of sticky liquid sugar smashing everything in its path.

(Image source: history)

Waist-high molasses settled over the neighborhood, and animals and people struggled to free themselves.

Anthony Di Stasio, who was walking home with his sisters from school, the wave picked him up and carried him, and he fell on the crest of it, as if he were surfing, he heard his mother calling his name and he could not answer, and his throat was so clogged with suffocating molasses that he fainted, and then He opened his eyes to find three of his sisters staring at him...they found little Anthony sprawled under a sheet on the side with dead bodies strewn around him.

The consequences were indescribable. When the bodies were recovered, the death toll was 21, including Maria Di Stasio, Anthony's 10-year-old sister, and a 65-year-old housewife who died when her house collapsed. More than 150 others were injured.

The cause of the tank collapse

As for the cause of the cistern explosion, there was a lot of speculation at the time that the cistern might have been blown up by an actor, but eventually, after six years of investigation at that time, one of the many experts who testified in the case indicated that the cistern walls It was thinner than required and used fewer rivets than was supposed to be used, and the tank metal was perforated in a way that created a great deal of pressure on the rivet hole.

It is believed that the tank was designed to be filled with water, but the molasses is much denser than water, and thus exerts more pressure on the walls of the tank.

The incident may be funny at first glance when you tell someone that people drowned in molasses, but it was a real disaster that caused chaos, destruction and loss of life, but people learned a lesson from it in raising building standards, to ensure the safety of structures, but who knows what could happen in the future .