"All the things we now take for granted in the business - that architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at projects - all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case," explains Puleo. On January 15, 1919, a giant molasses tank in Bostons North End exploded, resulting in the Great Molasses Flood. The case also completely changed the relationship between business and government. The case was historic in many ways.Īccording to Puleo, the case set the stage for future class action lawsuits and was "the first case in which expert witnesses were called to a great extent - engineers, metallurgists, architects, technical people." Immediately following the flood, 119 plaintiffs filed a civil lawsuit against U.S. Shortly after noon on January 15, 1919, a 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Rescue efforts continued for days, and cleanup took even longer. As it spilled out, it cooled and thickened, trapping survivors in the mess. Two days before the accident, a new shipment of hot molasses had been added to the tank, so when it burst, the molasses inside might have been slightly warmer than the outside air. Supposedly, you can still smell the molasses when it gets hot enough. A lot of that potential energy that you had from stacking this thing up really high is going to turn into kinetic energy. Nicole Sharp, an aerospace engineer and science educator, explains: "You basically have a giant stack of something that's really heavy and as soon as you remove whatever's holding that - in this case, the walls of the tank - all of that's gonna rush out. When the company received complaints that the tank was leaking, it painted the tank brown to disguise the leaks rather than repair them.īesides the structural aspects of the tank, researchers have explored how the scientific properties of the molasses itself explain why the flood was so destructive. Industrial Alcohol, the company that owned the tank, had rushed to build it, employing an overseer who was an expert in finance, not engineering. On top of that, the steel that they used, although it was state-of-the-art of the day, we know today that it could be relatively brittle under certain circumstances." Whoever did the design failed to provide the adequate thickness of the steel. A bubbling flood of molasses that sent a towering wave of goo down the streets of Boston in 1919, catching everything from horses to humans in its sticky grasp, killing 21 people, injuring. However, "one thing is very clear: it was under-designed. Researchers have been fascinated by this flood, studying the causes behind it as a phenomenon of science and poor engineering.Īccording to Ronald Mayville, an engineer who researches the flood in his spare time, there is no surefire reason the tank failed.
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