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How History Teaches Lessons: The Boston Molasses Flood

Updated: Jun 30


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You may or may not have heard of this horrible disaster that happened in Boston, Massachusetts in the year of 1919, so let me summarize the events:


Just 4 years prior to this happening, Boston Harbor was a thriving business center with a high consumer demand for alcohol (especially rum). To produce this, molasses was a very important ingredient, much more than even today, and so the USIA (US Industrial Alcohol) corporation, specifically its branch The Purity Distilling Company, decided to build a 50-feet tank for the purpose of storing it right in the midst of Boston's North End, a bustling neighborhood blooming with Italian culture.


However, in a rush for presumably profits or simply in order to meet this demand, the company seemed to have not thought this through, hiring uncertified architect(s) and engineers to oversee the construction, using steel too thin to hold the molasses, and other such reasons. To add on, just two days earlier, a large amount of hot molasses had been mixed into the cold liquid already inside, so the contrasting temperatures might have added to the pressure building up.


Anyhow, on January 15, 1919, the tank could not take it anymore and exploded, its flood of molasses starting at around 35 mph devastating buildings and killing around 21 people. Molasses is usually very slow-moving, but the heat from inside made it initially come out in a thinner form like a tsunami. However, as the January cold started to get to it, it thickened up and started to move more sluggishly, trapping people and animals under the sweet yet deadly pudding.


When pondering its consequences, though, many don't consider yet another part of Boston gravely affected by the flood: its harbor and the ocean.


When those millions of gallons infiltrated the water, it created a dark, murky color and a smell that lasted for months. But more importantly, it would have harmed underwater ecosystems there. Already back then, since there wasn't as much environmental awareness, waste from the fast-paced industry was simply dumped into the harbor. The addition of this much molasses could have caused the death of many marine creatures living there, especially the eel grass meadows that could have potentially been suffocated from some oxygen and been almost fully blocked from photosynthesis, a natural process well-known to be necessary in order to survive.


What was to blame for this? Well, one big thing is that after all, this happened in the early 1900s, when sustainability wasn't much of an important subject and engineers didn't need many certifications to complete even complex projects within dense neighborhoods.

Nonetheless, this incident, even though it didn't do much to raise climate activism, sparked a decision to enforce stricter construction standards and protocols, as well as to promote more thought into urban planning/design.


Just a few months ago, ArcGIS, a very well-known geography software, published a story about this disaster, and states that "Boston's waterfront restoration and green space development, driven by lessons from the 1919 Molasses Flood, integrate historical preservation with climate resilience projects like the Resilient Boston Harbor and Urban Forest Plan.." (Sanders, et al.)

This shows that although environmental cleanliness wasn't a focus back then when thinking about the disaster, we must remember the fact that as much as the people living in the North End struggled (which is a lot), the marine ecosystem right next to it must have suffered a significant amount as well. If urban planning wasn't the best back then, let's try to revolutionize it today, by staying aware of how the urban world is developing and designing each and every construction project with the Earth in mind.




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