On Tuesday, to commemorate the centennial, Puleo will discuss his book at 6pm in the Boston Public Library. You have these two disasters, and long-standing positive ramifications.” I liked to tell people, the molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards across the country. Puleo told the Guardian: “The tank itself didn’t even require a permit to be built. In 2003 Puleo published a book, Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. The North End neighborhood was more than 90% Italian back then, a working class area. One local, Stephen Puleo, was working on a master’s thesis on Italian immigrants when he began to research the flood. The flood is not well known outside Boston. Nowadays, it’s easy to miss the plaque that stands near the former site of the molasses tank. The first class action lawsuit against a major corporation, Dorr paved the way for modern regulation. Victims and their families were granted $628,000 in damages. In April 1925, a state auditor ruled that company’s negligence led to structural failure of the tank. The investigation lasted more than five years, with over a thousand witnesses testifying. The company argued that Italian anarchist groups blew up the tank. They argued that the tank was too thin and poorly built. It took months to recover all bodies.Ī class action lawsuit arose from the flood, Dorr v United States Industrial Alcohol Company, with 119 plaintiffs including families of victims and injured parties. Photograph: Boston Athenaeumįor weeks, farmers from neighboring towns carted away the molasses. The Boston Evening Post described how an elderly Italian man, George Kakavis, spent days watching crews sift through the molasses, timber and debris in his “banana storage” cellar, in order to find $4,400 he had squirreled away in a cigar box.Ī daily newspaper in Boston reports on the flood, circa 1919. A week later, the body of a child was found behind a freight train. One firefighter was in an 18in crawl space, trying to keep his head above the molasses. The firehouse was knocked off its foundation, burying the men. Several tradesmen were sitting at the Engine 31 firehouse playing cards and eating lunch. Her sister was found alive in hospital days later, having suffered a stroke and disfigurement. When she woke up, the entire building was gone.

She heard a loud sound, she later testified, adding: “It knocked me down and tipped the tub over me.” Her jaw was broken. Seventy-eight-year-old Elizabeth O’Brien had walked out of her Commercial Street home, where she had been speaking with her sister about a tag sale, in order to do some washing. A 15ft wave of syrup rushed over Commercial Street and against buildings at 35mph, killing 21 people and injuring 150. Injured, completely covered in molasses, he managed to grab a ladder thrown to him by a foreman. He was carried 35ft before slamming against a door. The molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards He ran toward the harbor, only to be overtaken by a wave of molasses. According to court transcripts, he saw an electric railway car swinging towards him, along with bottles and freight boxes. Isaac Yetton was hauling a load of automobile inner tubes into a shed when he heard a snap. Two days later, parts of the metal tank ripped though trusses of the elevated train track, 20ft below. On 13 January, it had been filled almost to capacity.

The tank was built in 1915 to accommodate increased wartime demand. Owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, the molasses had been brought to the city from the Caribbean, then piped from the harbor to the vat through 220ft of heated piping. At around 1pm on 15 January 1919, a 50ft-tall steel holding tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End ruptured, sending 2.3m gallons of molasses pouring into the neighborhood.

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