To live in Malibu is to be vulnerable to disaster. As Malibu recovers from Woolsey—its worst wildfire in recent history—the City of Boston is commemorating one of its worst disasters. A bizarre chapter in American history—nearly forgotten and almost unbelievable—the Great Molasses Flood occurred 100 years ago this month.
It’s hard to believe, but a century ago a tsunami of thick brown, syrupy molasses was unleashed upon Boston’s North End—the same neighborhood of Paul Revere and the Old North Church that stands today. Scores of buildings around the church were leveled and 21 people killed in one of the most unusual disasters ever recorded.
In the year leading up to Prohibition, alcohol manufacturers saw a bleak future ahead. The Purity Distilling Company decided to stockpile molasses to be fermented and distilled into rum while still legal. Purity hastily constructed a 50 foot tall, 90 foot wide tank at the edge of the historic North End of Boston. It soon became apparent the structure was shoddily built, when molasses could be seen leaking from its thin walls and neighborhood kids and housewives brought cups to be filled with the sweet sticky goo seeping from its edges. The company soon painted the tanker brown in obfuscation.
Then, on a relatively warm (for Boston) 40-degree day, Jan. 15—the last day before Prohibition went into effect—the unthinkable occurred. After warm molasses was added to the tank to lessen its viscosity, a loud rumbling rippled through the neighborhood. Seconds later, a massive explosion ripped the tank open, sending a 25-foot-tall wave of thick goo crashing into the North End at an estimated 35 miles per hour.
Two-point-three million gallons of black syrup swept through, decimating the neighborhood and everything in its path. Buildings were ripped from foundations. An elevated train track was knocked to the ground. Rivets from the tank shot out like bullets from machine guns. The dead were drowned or suffocated after being pulled into waist-deep thickness and left struggling in the quicksand like goo. Along with 21 dead, 150 were injured. More than 100 horses were killed, either swept away, drowned or shot after struggling in the hardening waist-deep wreckage.
First responders to the catastrophe were met with a half-mile swath of crumpled buildings and bodies covered in thick muck that was slowly beginning to harden. The sticky mess was tracked all over the city as rescuers made their way home on street cars and trains. Boston Harbor, also hit by the warm, thick wave of molasses, was said to be colored brown through the summer of 1919.
After years of litigation, the United States Industrial Alcohol Company that owned Purity paid out-of-court settlements totaling roughly $6.5 million in today’s dollars to settle claims—USIA had argued that anarchists sabotaged the tank.
Today, there is little to reveal the catastrophic event that smothered the neighborhood, now teeming with tourists along the city’s Freedom Trail, save for a simple green plaque that is hard to find at the end of Industrial Street near the waterfront. The historic streets that played an important role in shaping the Revolutionary War are now filled with some of the best Italian restaurants in the country and dotted with cannoli shops with waits often an hour long when students return to Beantown.
A century later, folks who know about the Great Molasses Flood claim on hot summer days they can still smell the sweet scent of molasses buried deep within the history of the city’s brick facades.