Across the street, down the street, it rolled like a two-sided breaker at the seashore. It smote the huge steel girders of the "L" structure and bent, twisted, and snapped them, as if by the smash of a giant's fist. Dead horses, cats, and dogs have been carted away in team after team.Ī rumble, a hiss - some say a boom and a swish - and the wave of molasses swept out. More than 50 injured were in hospitals and at their homes.
Eleven persons - a woman, a girl, and nine men - were the known dead at midnight. Huge Molasses Tank Explodes in North End 11 Dead, 50 HurtĪ 50-foot wave of molasses - 2,300,000 gallons of it - released in some manner yet unexplained, from a giant tank, swept over Commercial street and its waterfront from Charter street to the southerly end of North End park yesterday afternoon.Įnsnaring in its sticky flood more than 100 men, women, and children crushing buildings, teams, automobiles, and street cars - everything in its path - the black, reeking mass slapped against the side of the buildings footing Copp's Hill and then swished back toward the harbor. Shortly afterward police reserves arrived, together with a military company from an army station. Copeland the enlisted men gave first aid to the injured, searched the ruins for bodies, and assisted in patrolling the district. Under the direction of Lieutenant Commander H. The first rescue party on the scene was a squad detailed from the State nautical schoolship Nantucket, which was anchored at the playground pier. The street was strewn with debris intermixed with molasses and all traffic was stopped. Wagons, carts, and motor trucks were overturned. A fourth fireman was thrown through the window into the water, but was picked up. One, George Leahy, was killed and the other two injured. The building was crushed and three firemen were buried in the ruins. One of the sections of the tank wall fell on the firehouse which was nearby. The other city building, which had an office on the ground floor and a tenement above, was similarly torn from its foundations. The building was demolished and the wreckage was hurled fifty yards. The greatest mortality apparently occurred in one of the city buildings, where a score of municipal employees were eating their lunch. Two million gallons of molasses rushed over the streets and converted into a sticky mass the wreckage of several small buildings which had been smashed by the force of the explosion.
The circular war broke into two great segments of sheet iron which were pulled in opposite directions. The tank was owned by the Purity Distilling Company, a subsidiary of the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, with a plant in Cambridge.Ī dull, muffled roar gave but an instant's warning before the top of the tank was blown into the air.
Duffee, and James Lennon, a motorman, of Lenox, and J.M. At a late hour tonight the only bodies identified were those of a fireman, George Leahy, two residents of tenements in the vicinity, Mrs. Probably a dozen persons were killed and fifty injured by the explosion of a huge tank of molasses on the waterfront off Commercial Street, near Kenny Square, today.
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