[Sca-cooks] OT OOP Exploding Molassas

[Terry Decker]

> >Do you mean you've never heard of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919?  A 
> >terrible tragedy -- 21 killed and 150 injured.
>
> The flood I had heard about.  We had a similar happenstance in the Snake 
> River Canyon north of here.  I had thought that the fault was more a lack 
> of baffles in the tanks than any explosion.  Will have to look into what 
> is in that stuff.
>
> Cheers
>
> Malkin

It was a single tank 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter of riveted metal 
sheets.  Some of the seams failed releasing as much as 2,300,000 gallons of 
molasses.  The precise causes of the failure are unknown, but poor 
construction, metal fatigue, expansion of the molasses due to a rise in 
temperature, gas pressure from fermentation or a combination of some or all 
of the preceding are considered likely causes for the failure.

Bear