Several tradesmen were sitting at the Engine 31 firehouse playing cards and eating lunch. Her sister was found alive in hospital days later, having suffered a stroke and disfigurement. When she woke up, the entire building was gone.
She heard a loud sound, she later testified, adding: “It knocked me down and tipped the tub over me.” Her jaw was broken. Seventy-eight-year-old Elizabeth O’Brien had walked out of her Commercial Street home, where she had been speaking with her sister about a tag sale, in order to do some washing. A 15ft wave of syrup rushed over Commercial Street and against buildings at 35mph, killing 21 people and injuring 150. Injured, completely covered in molasses, he managed to grab a ladder thrown to him by a foreman. He was carried 35ft before slamming against a door. The molasses flood did for building construction standards what the Cocoanut Grove fire did for fire standards He ran toward the harbor, only to be overtaken by a wave of molasses. According to court transcripts, he saw an electric railway car swinging towards him, along with bottles and freight boxes. Isaac Yetton was hauling a load of automobile inner tubes into a shed when he heard a snap. Two days later, parts of the metal tank ripped though trusses of the elevated train track, 20ft below. On 13 January, it had been filled almost to capacity.
The tank was built in 1915 to accommodate increased wartime demand. Owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, the molasses had been brought to the city from the Caribbean, then piped from the harbor to the vat through 220ft of heated piping. At around 1pm on 15 January 1919, a 50ft-tall steel holding tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End ruptured, sending 2.3m gallons of molasses pouring into the neighborhood.