0:00 The children of Boston’s North End had a secret.0:03 A sweet one.0:04 They would bring cups and pails to the giant, dark brown tank on Commercial Street and wait.0:12 They’d wait for the dark, thick syrup that wept constantly from its seams.0:18 Free candy, courtesy of the Purity Distilling Company.0:22 No one stopped them.0:24 This file, number nineteen-nineteen-dash-B, suggests no one cared.0:29 It reminds me of the files from Gauley Bridge we examined—another story of warnings ignored, another cost tallied in human lives.0:39 But where that tragedy was buried in dust, this one was hidden in plain sight, painted brown to mask the truth.0:48 The tank was an ugly, hurried thing.0:51 Fifty feet tall, ninety feet across, built in nineteen fifteen to hold molasses for the United States Industrial Alcohol Company.1:01 USIA, the parent company, was turning the molasses into industrial alcohol, a key component in wartime munitions.1:10 The pressure was immense.1:12 The construction was rushed.1:15 The steel plates used for the walls were too thin.1:19 Dangerously thin.1:20 They were never tested properly by qualified engineers.1:24 The contract required filling the tank with water to check for leaks.1:30 Instead, they filled it with only six inches of water.1:34 It was faster.1:35 It was cheaper.1:37 Almost immediately, it began to leak.1:40 The groans and creaks from the structure were so loud, local residents could hear them.1:47 Supervisors repeatedly sent memos to the company treasurer, a man named Arthur P.1:53 Jell, warning him about the structural problems.1:57 He ignored them.1:58 To solve the problem of the leaks—or rather, the problem of people SEEING the leaks—he ordered the tank painted a deep, molasses brown.2:09 Out of sight, out of mind.2:11 For four years, the tank stood there, weeping its sweet poison, a disaster waiting for a catalyst.2:19 On January fifteenth, nineteen nineteen, the catalyst arrived.2:24 The temperature, which had been near zero, suddenly jumped to above forty degrees.2:31 That same day, a new, warm shipment of molasses was pumped into the already-strained tank.2:38 At around twelve-thirty in the afternoon, workers at a nearby firehouse heard a low, rumbling groan.2:46 It was followed by a rapid succession of metallic cracks, like a machine gun firing.2:53 It was the sound of rivets popping, one after another, giving way under unimaginable stress.3:00 Then, the fifty-foot wall of steel simply tore open.3:04 Two point three million gallons of raw molasses erupted outwards.3:09 Not as a liquid, but as a wave.3:12 A thick, brown tsunami, estimated to be fifteen to forty feet high, moving at thirty-five miles per hour.3:20 It obliterated everything in its path.3:23 It lifted a freight wagon off its wheels and threw it against a building.3:29 It snapped the steel supports of the elevated railway.3:33 It pushed a firehouse clean off its foundation.3:37 Twenty-one people died.3:39 One hundred and fifty were injured.3:42 Most victims were not drowned.3:44 The molasses was too thick.3:46 It clung.3:47 It held.3:48 It suffocated them where they stood.3:51 USIA tried to blame anarchists, claiming the tank was bombed.3:56 But the court-appointed auditor found differently.4:00 After a three-year investigation, the company was found COMPLETELY responsible.4:06 The cause was simple negligence.4:09 Cheap construction.4:10 Ignored warnings.4:11 USIA paid over six hundred thousand dollars in settlements, a massive sum for the time.4:18 The case changed everything.4:21 It led to the first modern building and engineering regulations in America—laws requiring certified engineers to sign and seal their plans.4:32 The cleanup took eighty-seven thousand man-hours.4:36 For weeks, they pumped salt water from the harbor to wash the sugar into the bay.4:42 But for decades, on hot summer days, the people of the North End swore they could still smell it.4:50 A phantom sweetness in the air.4:52 The ghost of a secret that refused to stay buried.
