WEIRD WEDNESDAY

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NON-WATER FLOODS

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London Beer Flood, 1814:

The London Beer Flood was an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery, London, on 17 October 1814.

Horse Shoe Brewery, London, c. 1800

It took place when one of the 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels: between 128,000 and 323,000 imperial gallons (580,000–1,470,000 L; 154,000–388,000 US gal) of beer were released in total.

The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery. Eight people were killed.

A wave of porter some 15 feet (4.6 m) high destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into an area of slum dwellings known as the St Giles rookery, where it destroyed two houses and badly damaged two others.

In one of the houses a four-year-old girl, Hannah Bamfield, was having tea with her mother and another child. The wave of beer swept the mother and the second child into the street; Hannah was killed. In the second destroyed house, a wake was being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy; Anne Saville, the boy's mother, and four other mourners (Mary Mulvey and her three-year-old son, Elizabeth Smith and Catherine Butler) were killed. Eleanor Cooper, a 14-year-old servant of the publican of the Tavistock Arms in Great Russell Street, died when she was buried under the brewery's collapsed wall while washing pots in the pub's yard. Another child, Sarah Bates, was found dead in another house in New Street.

The coroner's inquest returned a verdict that the eight had lost their lives "casually, accidentally and by misfortune".

The brewery was nearly bankrupted by the event; it avoided collapse after a rebate from HM Excise on the lost beer. The brewing industry gradually stopped using large wooden vats after the accident. The brewery moved in 1921, and the Dominion Theatre is now where the brewery used to stand. Meux & Co went into liquidation in 1961.

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Dublin whiskey fire, 1875

An illustration of the Dublin whiskey fire in The Illustrated London News, 1875

The Dublin whiskey fire took place on 18 June 1875 in the Liberties area of Dublin. It lasted a single night but killed 13 people (from alcohol poisoning), and resulted in €6 million worth of damage in whiskey alone (adjusted for inflation).

People drank from the 6 inches (15 cm) deep river of whiskey, none of the fatalities suffered during the fire were due to smoke inhalation, burns, or any other form of direct contact with the fire itself; all of them were attributed to alcohol poisoning from drinking the undiluted whiskey running through the streets that had been stored in casks that exploded; this alcohol was much more potent than whiskey offered at retail in bottles.

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Great Molasses flood, 1919

The Great Molasses Flood, also known as the Boston Molasses Disaster,was a disaster that occurred on Wednesday, January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

A large storage tank filled with 2.3 million U.S. gallons (8,700 cubic meters) of molasses, weighing approximately[b] 13,000 short tons (12,000 metric tons) burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour), killing 21 people and injuring 150. The event entered local folklore and residents reported for decades afterwards that the area still smelled of molasses on hot summer days.

According to a report in the Boston Post at the time:

Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage [...] Here and there struggled a form—whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was [...] Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings—men and women—suffered likewise.

Wreckage of the collapsed tank visible in background, centre, next to light coloured warehouse. Elevated railway structure visible at far left and the North End Park bathing beach to the far right.

A ‘before’ view showing the intact molasses tank

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Rockwood & Company shipping department fire, 1919

Exterior of shipping department, 1918

On May 12, 1919, a fire broke out in the shipping department of the Rockwood & Company chocolate factory complex on Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn. At around 1 am, materials and products stored on the second floor of the department are suspected to have caught fire by spontaneous combustion. The New York Fire Department were unable to save the building but prevented the spread of the fire to the rest of the plant.

Firefighting water washed a mixture of molten chocolate and butter out onto neighbouring streets where it blocked storm drains and caused a flood sufficient to "float a rowboat for two blocks". Local children crowded to the site to taste the mixture. The fire was extinguished by around 11 am and caused damage in excess of $75,000 (equivalent to $1,360,221 in 2024).

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Aberfan disaster, 1966

The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan and overlaid a natural spring. Heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses.

The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board (NCB), and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees.

There were seven spoil tips on the hills above Aberfan; Tip 7—the one that slipped onto the village—was started in 1958 and, at the time of the disaster, was 111 feet (34 m) high. In contravention of the NCB's procedures, the tip was partly based on ground from which springs emerged. After three weeks of heavy rain the tip was saturated and approximately 140,000 cubic yards (110,000 m3) of spoil slipped down the side of the hill and onto the Pantglas area of the village. The main building hit was the local junior school, where lessons had just begun; 5 teachers and 109 children were killed.

An official inquiry was chaired by Lord Justice Edmund Davies. The report placed the blame squarely on the NCB. The organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was criticised for making misleading statements and for not providing clarity as to the NCB's knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside. Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined.

The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund (ADMF) was established on the day of the disaster. It received nearly 88,000 contributions, totalling £1.75 million. The remaining tips were removed only after a lengthy fight by Aberfan residents against resistance from the NCB and the government on the grounds of cost. The site's clearance was paid for by a government grant and a forced contribution of £150,000 taken from the memorial fund. In 1997 the British government paid back the £150,000 to the ADMF, and in 2007 the Welsh Government donated £1.5 million to the fund and £500,000 to the Aberfan Education Charity as recompense for the money wrongly taken. Many of the village's residents developed medical problems as a result of the disaster, and half the survivors have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder at some time in their lives.

Aberfan in the days immediately after the disaster, showing the extent of the spoil slip