The last fill to near capacity occurred two days prior to the failure.Ī 6-ton piece of the tank that included part of the manhole was found the furthest from the tank, about 200 feet, in the playground in the right foreground of Figure 1. The tank had been filled 29 times, but only four times to near maximum capacity. The weather conditions at the time of the failure were partly cloudy, about 40 ☏ (4 ☌) with a wind of at most 24 mph, absent of snow or rain. Figure 3 is a schematic of the structures that were adjacent to the tank, as well as the approximate initial locations of some of those killed when the tank burst. Figure 2 is a photograph taken at the disaster site. Photo: Courtesy of Bill Noonan, Boston Fire Department Archives.Īnalysis of the accident scene began immediately after the failure. Figure 2: A large piece of the tank pushed against the elevated railway. An excellent account of the general circumstances surrounding the accident, with particular attention to the historical and social aspects at the time - anarchists were blamed by some for setting off an explosion in the tank - is given by Stephen Puleo (2003). Organizations carried out large-scale tank explosion tests and wide panel fracture tests that included a replica manhole from which nearly everyone agreed the fracture initiated. The many experts included several from MIT and Harvard, split about evenly between sides. The case was, without doubt, an expensive one. (Dorr, of the law firm Hale and Dorr, was the named plaintiff who had his house damaged from the tank failure.) Abundant information is available on the accident, largely in the form of transcripts for the case of Dorr vs. The first fill occurred in February 1916, almost three years before the end of WWI. Figure 1 shows a photograph of the imposing tank a few months before the failure. It was situated close to the harbor near Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, Boston’s second oldest graveyard and a popular tourist attraction today. Industrial Alcohol, was used to store molasses shipped from the Caribbean for the production of a munitions ingredient.
#GREAT MOLASSES FLOOD OF 1919 TRIAL#
The incident resulted in a three-year trial in which the court auditor found the operator of the tank liable, but was frustrated by more than 20,000 pages of conflicting testimony from dozens of expert witnesses. The spill killed 21 people, drowned several horses, and caused substantial structural damage to nearby buildings and the adjacent elevated railroad. 15, 1919, at about half past noon, a tank containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, sending a wave of sticky liquid through the streets of the North End of Boston. A structural and metallurgical perspective of design practices at the time and fracture evidence based on current understanding.
0 kommentar(er)
