The Great Molasses Flood and 6 Other Strange Disasters

At midday on January 15, 1919, in Boston, a deluge of “sweet, sticky death” poured from a burst storage tank. The tank was designed to contain fermented molasses, which was utilized in the process of making industrial alcohol for munitions and other World War I-era weapons. The wave released during the Great Molasses Flood was said to have been 15 to 40 feet (5 to 12 meters) high and some 160 feet (50 meters) wide. Washing through the streets at approximately 35 miles (55 kilometers) per hour, it knocked down buildings and covered automobiles, horses, and pedestrians. Thickened by the cold temperatures of the season, the viscous molasses solidified quickly, trapping many of those who were unlucky enough to be in its path. Twenty-one people were killed, mostly by suffocation, and some 150 others were injured.

In 1908 a large and powerful explosion occurred in the stratosphere above the remote taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia. The blast, caused by the explosion of an incoming comet or meteorite above the site, leveled about 2,000 square miles (5,200 square kilometers) of pine forest. The force of the explosion was estimated to be roughly 1,000 times the power of the atomic blast that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. Investigators who believe that the object was a comet point to records that describe the development of noctilucent clouds in the skies over Europe shortly after the blast—which might have been caused by the release of ice crystals into the upper atmosphere by a comet’s sudden vaporization. Other investigators argue that the object was a meteorite that might have been 300 feet (100 meters) in diameter.

In the predawn hours of August 21, 1986, a volcanic lake in Cameroon belched a cloud of carbon dioxide (CO₂) that asphyxiated more than 1,700 people. The CO₂ was likely generated by volcanic activity. In other volcanic lakes the turn of the seasons alters the density of the water at the surface so that it periodically mixes with the waters below. In the case of Lake Nyos, however, mixing did not occur, because in the tropics temperatures remain relatively warm year-round. Since the surface waters of this tropical lake did not cool enough to descend, concentrations of dissolved CO₂ gas built up in the water, hovering close to the lake’s floor. A sudden landslide of rock or an increase in heating from below by volcanic activity appears to have forced bubbles of CO₂ gas to the surface, where the bubbles combined to form a suffocating cloud whose volume could have been as large as 0.3 cubic mile (1.2 cubic kilometers). The deadly cloud, which likely formed within a span of just a few minutes, killed people, livestock, and other animals within a 15-mile (24-kilometer) radius.

London has long been known for its fog and mist. Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, however, such weather conditions have mixed with smoke, resulting in yellow “pea-soup” fog (as immortalized in the works of Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), or smog. In the late fall of 1952, a combination of coal-driven furnace smoke, fog, and cold conditions created one of the deadliest smog events in the history of modern London. Beginning on December 5, the city was subjected to four days of thick smog, which killed somewhere between 4,000 and 12,000 people and much of the cattle held in the Smithfield market. Most of the deaths resulted from the very young and the very old succumbing to attacks of bronchial asthma and pneumonia.

In late October 1948 the town of Donora, Pennsylvania, was visited by deadly fog. For four days weather conditions trapped fluoride fumes, particulates (which included lead and cadmium), and other emissions (such as carbon monoxide, hydrofluoric acid, and sulfur dioxide) from the region’s steel smelting plants and zinc works within the Monongahela River Valley, where Donora sits. The air failed to move, and the high concentrations of airborne pollutants built up near the ground. Nearly 5,000 people suffered from the effects of this pollution episode, with many people developing fluorine poisoning with concentration levels in the bloodstream rising to 12–25 times the normal amount. Twenty-two people died, and some 50 additional fog-attributed deaths occurred within a few months. For the next 10 years the town’s mortality rate surpassed those of its neighbors. Many of the survivors had permanent respiratory damage. In the aftermath of the Donora Death Fog, the state of Pennsylvania created and passed the first of its air pollution laws (in 1959), and the story of this event was recounted as evidence supporting the development and passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act.

On April 25, 2017, a warehouse accident in Lebedyan, Russia, resulted in the release of about 176,000 barrels (28 million liters) of fruit and vegetable juices into the streets and into the Don River. Two injuries resulted when the roof of the Pepsi-owned facility, housing storage containers of a variety of juices (including tomato, orange, and apple juices), collapsed unexpectedly. No deaths resulted from the spill. Although there was some concern that liquid might have damaged the Don River’s aquatic community, some seven days later it was reported that no evidence of environmental damage had come to fruition.

On October 4, 2010, a retaining wall gave way at the Ajkai Timföldgyar alumina (aluminum oxide) plant in Ajkai, Hungary. The retaining wall held back a part of a waste reservoir containing a tremendous volume of red caustic sludge. Some 38 million cubic feet (1 million cubic meters, or about 6.7 million barrels) of the toxic material was released after part of the wall failed. The sludge moved downhill, covering low-lying villages in Hungary’s Marcal River valley. At least 10 people were killed, with more than 120 others injured after they made contact with the sludge, which burned their skin and caused eye irritation. Made up of waste products—such as lead—from bauxite refining, the wave of sludge made it into local rivers and streams, killing many plants and animals along the way, before some of it entered the Danube River. Although many ecologists feared that the material’s mixing with the waters of the Danube would initiate something of an environmental catastrophe, the impact on the Danube was low.