#Boston molasses flood civil suit full#
#Boston molasses flood civil suit trial#
#Boston molasses flood civil suit professional#

Only a permit for the tank’s foundation was required. Additionally, there was no permit required by local officials to build the tank. Nor was an engineer required to certify the tank’s design. No building codes or regulatory oversight: There were no regulations or building codes that required any testing or inspection of the tank, either during or after construction.

#Boston molasses flood civil suit full#

The priority of speed over safety was also evident in Jell’s decision to forego a full leak test of the tank. Priority during construction given to speed, rather than sound practices: Due to the impending arrival of a large molasses shipment, the priority during construction was to finish the project quickly, and workers were ordered to hurry.

#Boston molasses flood civil suit professional#

The person in charge of getting this tank built for USIA was the company’s secretary, Arthur Jell, who had been a clerk all his professional life and had no experience in construction or engineering. No engineering experience in the project’s management. The gas exerted pressure on the weak sidewalls of the tank, ultimately causing a rupture. The day of the disaster itself, the temperature shot up to 40 degrees, causing the generation of carbon dioxide gas that could not vent out of the molasses through the leathery “shell” left over from the previous days’ cold. An MIT professor who investigated the tank’s failure concluded that all of the joined steel plates used in the tank’s construction were fastened together with an insufficient number of rivets.įermentation due to rapid temperature change: The day before the tank failed, the temperature had been a bone-chilling 2 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the outer layer of the body of molasses in the tank to become dense and leathery.

Insufficient numbers of rivets connecting the plates. For example, the design called for the steel plates on the top ring to be 0.312 inches thick Hammond delivered a steel plate that was only 0.284 inches thick.

#Boston molasses flood civil suit trial#

Insufficient thickness of the steel plates: During the civil trial after the flood, the contractor Hammond testified that the thickness of every steel plate used in constructing the tank was less than the design specification. The tank continued to leak, but it was less visible against the brown paint. USIA’s response to the concerns was to re-caulk it several times, then paint it brown. Children from the nearby neighborhood would come regularly and scrape the “free molasses” off the ground. And the tank had numerous leaks visible around its sides-leaks that would pool at the base of the tank. USIA could accept the large molasses shipment that came in on December 31st.Įmployees of USIA, however, began reporting that the tank “groaned” ominously and vibrated every time it took on molasses. There were no leaks found, so the tank was declared complete on 29 December-and Jell’s project seemed a success. This saved the cost of purchasing so much municipal water and several weeks of work. With time running out, Jell took a major shortcut: instead of filling up the tank completely with water to leak test it, he would only fill the tank with six inches of water. Jell was desperate to complete construction by the end of the month, but bad weather slowed the project. The enormous tank would be 90 feet in diameter, 50 feet tall, and have a capacity for 2.3 million gallons of storage.Ĭonstruction of the tank began in early December 1915. He then contracted the Hammonds company to design and build the tank. Jell began negotiating for a parcel of land on the waterfront between the inner harbor and a residential neighborhood.

USIA needed to accept a shipment of nearly 1 million gallons of molasses on 31 December, and if there were no tank, it would be dumped in the sea as a financial loss.

The USIA president told Jell that his standing in the company depended upon his success with this project, which had to be completed by the end of 1915. USIA picked Arthur Jell, the company secretary, to head up the project. Industrial Alcohol (USIA) needed a place to store a vast amount of molasses-the raw material in manufacturing alcohol-in Boston. In 1915, the demand for industrial alcohol was growing fast, with World War I raging in Europe. What had caused such a catastrophic and destructive failure of the molasses tank? Building the Molasses Tank It swept away buildings, vehicles, and people, killing 21 and injuring 150 more. A 15-foot wave of molasses flowed, at 35 miles per hour, into nearby residential neighborhoods and downtown Boston. The jarring sound was followed by a muffled roar, and then 2.3 million gallons were released suddenly from a ruptured tank. Around 12:30 pm on January 15th, 1919, a noise like machine-gun fire erupted near downtown Boston.