Glacial Errata, No. 76

One: Boston, 1919

I know that when you think of “historical calamities involving food products,” of course you think immediately of the Great Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919. On January 15, temperatures were unusually warm, having rising to 40 degrees Fahrenheit in a very short amount of time. In Boston’s north end, at 529 Commercial Street near Kearney Square, the Purity Distilling Company maintained a large vat of molasses, which it used primarily to produce ethanol. The tank, standing 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter, could hold as much as 2.3 million gallons of the sticky stuff.

The tank had just received a fresh load of molasses the previous day, which had been warmed so as to facilitate transport, and possibly due to the mixture with the colder molasses inside, at 12:30 pm thermal expansion took place, causing the tank to rupture with a massive rumbling sound so loud and powerful it felt to witnesses like an elevated train was passing by.

The Great Boston Molasses Flood had begun.

The result was calamitous. The molasses spilled forth at about 35 mph, creating a wave 25 feet high at its peak that tore through the steel girders of nearby elevated railways and swept buildings off their foundations. Buildings were flooded as the liquid rushed through the streets—moving initially at great speed and causing great damage, only to turn sticky and gelatinous as it slowed down. The result was devastating: bystanders and animals were hit first by the shock and force of the liquid, then trapped by it.

150 people were injured, and 21 people, along with several horses and dogs, were killed.

Two: Pittsburgh, 1936

But that’s far from the only time a food product has gone horribly wrong. On December 17, 1936, a massive explosion rocked 2121 Smallman Street in Pittsburgh, blowing the roof off the building and sending it 50 feet in the air, while blowing out the windows in the church across the street—the whole thing caused by bananas.

Bananas, as you know, are tropical fruits, and don’t really grow well in Pittsburgh’s cold winters. At the time, they were shipped green up from the tropics, and when they got to northern climates, they were stored in “ripening rooms”: rooms kept at specially controlled warmed temperatures that would slowly bring the bananas to a stage where they were ready to sell (for all I know this may be still how things are done, I’m only doing so much research this week).

The thing is, bananas, as they ripen, release small amounts of ethylene gas, which is flammable. What appears to have happened is that the banana ripening room in Smallman Street had been poorly ventilated, allowing the ethylene gas to build up, and when Pittsburgh Banana Company employee Peter Kavanek entered the room that night during his normal routine and turned on the electric fan, he didn’t realize that there was a short in the fan, causing a spark which ignited the gas—and blew the building sky high.

Amazingly, though, Kavanek lived. He was found nearby, covered in ash, brick and banana, and sustained only minor injuries. No one else was nearby, and the Great Pittsburgh Banana Explosion Remains our only major Food Related Disaster this week with no human casualties.

Three: Minneapolis, 1878

Far more common than banana explosions or molasses floods, however, are dust explosions. In a tightly enclosed space where fine particles that are combustible disperse in the air in high enough concentrations, they can ignite under the right conditions to terrible effect. Sometimes this can happen in coal mines, or through the use of other non-edible substances. But some of the more deadly food-related disasters have also been dust explosions, including Minneapolis’s Great Mill Disaster.

Located on the city’s western bank of the Mississippi River, the Washburn A Mill was the largest mill in the world at the time (one of many along the riverbank), and one of the city’s largest employers, with 200 people working inside. It had been in operation for about four years when, on the night of May 2, 1878, something terrible went wrong. Fine particulate matter from the mill’s activity—flour suspended in tiny particles up and down the mill’s silos—had accumulated in the air through the years of operation, providing an ideal fuel, and around 7:00 pm, two dry millstones rubbed against each other, causing a spark that lit the flour and oxygen mix in the air, and all hell broke loose.

Three massive explosions took place within seconds. It was so loud it was heard in St. Paul. People nearby thought it was an earthquake, but as they turned to look they saw a fiery column erupting from the riverbank. The fireball sent chunks of the mill hundreds of feet into the air, scattering it throughout the city.

Fourteen people were killed outright in the blast. The fire was so intense it spread to the neighboring mills, and the heat made it nearly impossible for firefighters to get a handle on the blaze. By the time they had knocked it down, five more mills had been destroyed, and four more people were dead, bringing the total fatalities to eighteen.

Four: Cedar Rapids, 1919

It was cornstarch, not flour, that did in the Douglas Starch Works of Cedar Rapids, in 1919. Another dust explosion this time.

May 22, 1919. The night shift had just started. Once again, finely ground dry cornstarch had been allowed to accumulate in the air as fine particulate matter, suspended as the perfect fuel mixed with oxygen. When a small fire broke out, it lit the starch in the air and destroyed the entire factory in a massive fireball.

Forty-three workers died, and another thirty were injured. The shockwave from the blast was so strong that a small child at home on the other side of the river was thrown across the room, dying instantly.

Coming so soon after the end of World War One, there were some in town, supposedly, who thought that they were still somehow under attack by the Germans.

Five: London, 1817

There have been plenty of other food-related dust explosions—the Giacomelli Flour Warehouse Explosion of 1785, the Tradeston Flour Mills explosion of 1872, 1919’s Port Colborne explosion—but we’ll end this week with another flood, this time in London. In the early 19th century, Meux & Co.’s Horse Shoe Brewery, at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, maintained a large wooden vat secured with iron hoops, 22 feet tall, capable of holding 18,000 imperial vessels of porter.

On the afternoon of October 17, 1814, a storehouse clerk noticed one of the iron hoops securing the vat had slipped, but this in and of itself was not unusual—it happened every so often and usually was not a cause for concern. But an hour later, without warning, the vat failed, disgorging its contents with such force that it knocked open the stopcocks on several neighboring vessels, adding to the flood. Somewhere between 128,000 and 323,000 gallons of beer spilled forth onto the slums of London.

A 25 foot high wall of beer cascaded forth—it smashed through the back wall of the brewery and swept down New Street, destroying houses and sweeping children into the street. It poured into a house where an Irish family was holding a wake for a two year-old boy, killing five of the mourners. It spilled into cellars where people were trapped, forcing them to climb onto furniture to avoid being drowned. In all eight people were killed. In the wake of the flood, England phased out the use of wooden tanks in the brewing industry.

[No reliable imagery of the London flood that didn’t reek of being AI generated; use your imagination.]