The Great Floods
Since the dawn of storytelling, humans have been obsessed with floods—epic, world-ending deluges that usually involved, well, water. But not all floods follow the script. From rivers of chocolate to tidal waves of beer and butter, these messy disasters took a much tastier (and weirder) turn.
The Great Molasses Flood, January 1919, Boston, Massachusetts: Molasses
Molasses may be used to make brown sugar, rum, and many delicious foods—but it’s also used to make ethanol. That’s what the Purity Distilling Company in Boston did.
They made a lot of ethanol—which means they stored a lot of molasses.
Purity Distilling Company
Purity Distilling had a 2.3 million gallon storage tank for molasses. The viscous liquid inside weighed 13,000 short tons—but there’s something the company didn’t think of.
Molasses gets expands when it’s hot—and the more molasses you have, the more it’ll expand.
The Bostonian Society, Wikimedia Commons
Filled To The Brim
On January 15, 1919, Boston got an unexpected heat wave—a 40-degree Fahrenheit spike just after a fresh shipment of molasses had arrived. Spoiler: things were about to get very sticky.
Wired article, Wikimedia Commons
Molasses Expands
The resulting expansion made the tank burst—and it turns out, flooding molasses is a lot more dangerous than water.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
A Wave Of Tasty Destruction
The wave of molasses flooding out of the tank reached 25 feet high and moved at 35 miles per hour. It swept entire buildings away, and created a sweet-smelling shockwave that threw people off their feet.
Final Fatality Count: 21
The Great Molasses Flood claimed 21 lives, injured 150, caused immeasurable damage—and as you can imagine, the cleanup was a nightmare.
Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons
Sticky Sticky
For months, Bostonians tracked molasses through streets, homes, and streetcars—everything was sticky. Legend has it, on hot summer days, the air around the old flood zone still carries a faint, sugary scent, like history refusing to wash off.
The Great Dublin Whiskey Flood Of June 1875, Dublin, Ireland: Irish Whiskey
There’s something undeniably Irish about a whiskey flood, and that’s exactly what happened in Dublin in 1875.
National Library of Ireland on The Commons, Wikimedia Commons
That’s A Lot Of Brown
Sometime during the night of June 18, 1875, a fire started in Laurence Malone’s storehouse on Ardee Street, which contained over 300,000 gallons of Irish whiskey.
Barrels began to explode—and then the flood started.
A Flammable Flood
In Dublin, thousands of gallons of flammable liquid burst into the streets, turning the city into a ticking time bomb—and packing enough punch to level an entire row of houses.
Unknown author, Wikimedia Commons
Thank The Pigs
As the fire spread, squealing pigs alerted people very quickly, and the evacuation was surprisingly efficient. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any fatalities, however…
First Come, First Serve
As the river of whiskey flowed through the streets of Dublin, people grabbed anything they could—cups, jars, even their own hands—to snag a swig of the open bar.
Final Fatality Count: 13
In the end, no one succumbed to burns or smoke inhalation, but there were still 13 fatalities…from alcohol poisoning.
The Great Pepsi Flood Of April 2017, Lebedyan, Russia: Fruit And Vegetable Juices
Lebedyan, a quiet Russian city, is home to PepsiCo’s massive operations hub. But on April 25, 2017, things went flat—literally—when the roof of their giant warehouse suddenly gave way.
Шалин, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Final Fatality Count: 0
Thankfully, there were only two injuries when the roof collapsed, and 0 fatalities. But the people of Lebedyan were treated to a sight they would never forget.
Ludvig14, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Juicy
The collapsing roof sent 7.4 million gallons of fruit and vegetable juices surging into the streets of Lebedayan.
A Treat For The Fish
The flood was so severe that local officials worried that it would damage the local aquatic ecosystem, but thankfully, it seems the area avoided serious environmental damage.
Шалин, CC BY-SA 3.0 , Wikimedia Commons
The Great London Beer Flood, October 1814, London, England: Porter
Londoners in the early 1800s really loved their porter. The Horse Shoe Brewery cranked out over 100,000 barrels a year—and it wasn’t even the biggest game in town (just sixth largest!).
Still, that’s a whole lot of porter sloshing around. You can probably see where this is going...
Brewers’ Journal, Wikimedia Commons
Safety Saves Lives
Remember kids: Always check your fermenting tanks regularly! In 1814, corroded hoops in a massive vat of fermenting porter failed, releasing 270,000 gallons of dark beer into the streets of London.
Final Fatality Count: 8
Horse Shoe happened to be in an extremely densely packed area known as the rookery, making the flood all the more disastrous. Though everyone in the brewery survived, eight people, four of them children, lost their lives.
An Act Of God, Or Man?
Just moments before disaster struck, an iron band snapped off one of the brewery’s giant vats—but the staff shrugged it off. Minutes later, a tidal wave of beer was tearing through the streets.
Surprisingly, the courts chalked it up to an “act of God” and handed Horse Shoe Brewery a generous bailout to keep them from going belly-up.
The Great Brooklyn Chocolate Flood, May 1919, New York City, New York: Molten Chocolate And Butter
Chocolatier Rockwood & Company’s factory and headquarters took up nearly an entire city block in Brooklyn, where they churned out more chocolate than any American company other than Hershey.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Wikimedia Commons
"So This Is My Life"
Around 1am on May 12, 1919, a night watchman noticed smoke coming from the shipping department. He tracked the smoke, and found a fire starting to spead.
Unfortunately for him—and luckily for the children of Brooklyn—he was too late.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
Call The Fire Brigade
The watchman alerted the fire department and they arrived on the scene in minutes, but they struggled to get the blaze under control.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
Where's Augustus Gloop?
Eventually, the flames reached the factory’s storage rooms—and that’s when things got deliciously chaotic. As firefighters battled the blaze, their water unleashed a swirling mess of cocoa, butter, and molten chocolate, oozing out into the streets like a dessert gone rogue.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
Gimme Gimme Gimme
As firefighters struggled to control the blaze, local children rushed to the streets to get a taste of what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called an “ocean of fudge”.
Row, Row, Row, Your boat
There was so much of the thick, sweet mixtures that it’s said you could have floated a boat down two city blocks.
Final Fatality Count: 0
Luckily, no one was hurt in the Great Brooklyn Chocolate Flood, and property damage was pretty minimal. All in all? The kind of flood you almost wouldn’t mind wading through.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
Was There A Little Green Globule?
Authorities in Brooklyn tried to determine the cause of fire, but after an investigation, the best bet anyone could come up with was “spontaneous combustion”, which actually does occasionally happen in such situations.
The Great Portuguese Wine Flood, September 2023, São Lourenço do Bairro, Portugal: Red Wine
The Destilaria Levira in Portugal has been in operation since 1923, and it remains one of the largest in the country.
Adamus.spirits, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Buy! Buy! Buy!
In 2023, the distillery took advantage of a European wine surplus and purchased an enormous amount of wine. Unfortunately, it was a recipe for disaster.
We Sure This Wasn't Colorado?
On September 10, 2023, disaster struck when a storage tank at the distillery gave way. The rushing liquid knocked over a second tank, and in a heartbeat, 580,000 gallons of deep red flooded through the village of São Lourenço do Bairro.
Rodrigo Pereira, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Final Fatality Count: 0
The loss of the vino was obviously a financial hit to the distillery, but luckily, the damage caused by the flood was relatively minimal.
Definitely a bad day to hang your whites out on the line, though, that’s for sure.
The Great Wisconsin Butter Flood, May 1991, Madison, Wisconsin: Butter, Cheese, And Meat Products
If there was going to be a butter flood anywhere in the world, I would have guessed it’d be in Wisconsin. And it started, like many non-water floods, with a fire.
Lectrician2, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
I'm From The Government And I'm Here To Help
As the US government purchased huge amounts of cheese and butter, American farmers increased their prudocution by 30% in just a few years, rapidly leading to a butter surplus.
By 1990, 300 million pounds of dairy products were sitting in American warehouses.
That's A Lot Of Butter...
On May 3, 1991, Madison, Wisconsin’s Central Storage and Warehouse was holding a whopping 15 million pounds of butter—plus another 4 million pounds of sausage.
Then, things went up in flames.
What's That Smell?
As the fire started spreading, neighbors reported a horrible stench from the facility. Firefighters struggled to control the blaze, and it eventually spread to where the butter was stored.
Hope You Brought Lots Of Biscuits
After the fire had already been raging for hours, the building where the butter was stored collapsed, causing an enormous wave of melted butter to spill out.
Everyone Tuck Your Socks Into Your Pants!
For the next eight days, firefighters battled the blaze wading through waist-deep pools of melted butter and cheese—imagine fighting fire ankle-deep in your breakfast spread!
Where The Sun Don't Shine
After a shift trying to stop the blaze, firefighter Steven Davis said he had “butter in places a guy shouldn’t have butter by the end of the night.
Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, Picryl
Final Fatality Count: 0
The environmental and financial costs of the Wisconsin Butter Flood are hard to understate—butter spills have a similar effect to oil spills. But at least there were no fatalities.
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