I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919

by Lauren Tarshis

  Carmen shut the window, forcing those thoughts out of her mind. She had to focus on getting better right now.

  * * *

  Of all the people who came to visit, it was Tony she looked forward to seeing the most.

  Tony told Carmen what happened after they were separated. His ride on the broken wagon had been short. He’d been swept out to Commercial Street, where the river of molasses became shallower and shallower. He’d sloshed his way out and wandered around in a daze.

  “It was terrible,” he told Carmen, his face darkening, his voice dropping down to a whisper.

  The bodies — bent and broken, so covered with molasses that he couldn’t tell if they were men or women. People crying in pain. Injured horses.

  The mothers screaming for their children. Police everywhere.

  Mrs. Grasso was already looking for him, searching frantically. She’d found him pretty quickly.

  “And then we looked for you,” Tony told Carmen now, his lip quivering.

  Mr. Grasso had gone to the Haymarket Relief Station, a small hospital near the North End. That’s where the dead were laid out.

  Men who’d been working around the waterfront. A woman who lived in a house along Commercial Street. Two ten-year-old children who’d been near the tank.

  But not Carmen.

  More than 150 people had been hurt — carried away by the river of molasses, trapped in crushed buildings, struck by flying metal when the tank exploded. One man was blasted all the way into Boston Harbor. Injured people were in hospitals all across the city.

  It was three days before Mr. Grasso finally found Carmen at Boston City Hospital in the South End.

  Tony told Carmen something else that shocked her, what the molasses company was saying about why the tank broke apart.

  “They say someone put a bomb in the tank.”

  Carmen had sat up in bed. “Those liars!” she’d exclaimed, her voice so furiously loud a nurse had peeked in to shush her.

  But she couldn’t believe it!

  Everyone in the North End knew why the tank shattered — because it wasn’t built right. Even little kids knew that. The tank had leaked from the moment it was built!

  “Don’t worry,” Tony had said to her. “Nobody believes them.”

  Carmen could only hope Tony was right.

  * * *

  On her last night in the hospital, Carmen barely slept. Every time she drifted off, she’d fall into a nightmare. She kept reliving the moment when the wagon almost flipped, when she was drowning in the sticky darkness. When she heard Papa’s voice calling to her.

  And now Papa’s voice echoed through her mind again.

  Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

  Why was she still hearing these words? Carmen was safe now. Nothing was going to sweep her away.

  But Papa’s voice only got louder.

  Hold on. Hold on.

  What was Papa trying to tell her? What should she be holding on to now?

  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Carmen got out of bed and limped over to the window. The moon was bright, and the flickering streetlights cast a glow on the city. She could almost see over to the North End.

  Somewhere out there, the Grassos were curled up. Two girls under tattered covers. Two boys on the floor. Two parents in the bed across the room.

  Her school was out there, too, waiting for the students to arrive the next morning. Mr. Lawrence had his lesson all planned out.

  A warm feeling spread through her body. Because she suddenly knew what Papa was telling her: To hold on to their life here in l’America.

  The life they had built together. The friends they had made. The school she loved so much.

  She took a deep breath, lifting her chin.

  “I hear you, Papa,” she said.

  Right then, she knew she would not — could not — go back to Italy.

  If the Grassos needed help paying for her food and clothes, she’d figure out how to get a job. There would be people here to help her. The Grassos and Mr. Lawrence and their neighbors. Rosie, too.

  It would be very hard, Carmen knew, to work and also go to school.

  “Anything was possible” didn’t mean everything would be easy.

  But Carmen would hold on. No matter what.

  Carmen sat in a chair watching Mrs. Grasso cook up a storm. The kids were bouncing off the walls. The apartment was filled with delicious smells — garlic and tomatoes and milky melted cheese. Everyone was excited for the special dinner Mrs. Grasso was making in honor of Carmen leaving the hospital. Best of all, Mr. Vita was joining them, too; he was finally back from Connecticut. Mr. Grasso had gone to meet him at the train station.

  “When is Mr. Vita coming with Carmen’s present?” Frankie asked.

  This was the third time today someone had mentioned a present for Carmen.

  “Shhhh!” Tony said, slugging Frankie’s arm. “The present is a surprise.”

  “You shhhhhh!” Frankie said, giving Tony a shove.

  “I want a present!” Teresa whined.

  “My present!” wailed Marie.

  Mrs. Grasso looked up from her pot.

  “Basta!” — enough! “Tony, please take everyone into the bedroom. Make sure the beds are made.”

  “But, Mama …”

  “Go!” Mrs. Grasso said.

  Tony looked at Carmen, who could only shrug helplessly. She wanted to help him with the kids. But the doctor had warned that Carmen had to rest her leg. Mrs. Grasso had ordered her to stay put in her chair.

  Tony herded the kids into the bedroom. The door closed, and Mrs. Grasso looked up at Carmen with a relieved smile.

  “Some peace!”

  Carmen smiled back.

  Tell her now, Carmen thought. They were finally alone. Now was her chance to tell Mrs. Grasso that she wasn’t going back to Italy.

  Carmen cleared her throat. She was afraid Mrs. Grasso would be mad, that she wouldn’t understand. But Carmen still had to tell her.

  “Mrs. Grasso,” she said, “I need to talk to you …”

  “Yes, dear,” Mrs. Grasso said.

  Carmen took a breath and blurted it out.

  “I know about the plan. For me to go back to Italy.”

  Mrs. Grasso’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Carmen swallowed hard but didn’t lose her nerve.

  “I’m sorry but …” Carmen went on. “I overheard you and Mr. Grasso talking about the ship. I know you want me to go back to Italy, to be with Nonna.”

  “Carmen …”

  “I’m sorry but I’ve decided,” Carmen said. She sat up taller in her chair. “I want to stay here.”

  There. Carmen had done it.

  Mrs. Grasso rushed over. She bent down so she was eye to eye with Carmen.

  “Carmen,” she said. “We never said you were going back to Italy. You aren’t getting on any ship.”

  “But I heard you say —”

  Carmen’s words were cut off by the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs and Mr. Grasso’s booming voice. “We’re back!”

  The bedroom door burst open, and the kids spilled out.

  Carmen and Mrs. Grasso would have to finish their talk some other time.

  Tony rushed over to Carmen. He beamed at her. He looked like he was about to burst with excitement.

  “I hear them!” Frankie cried.

  The little girls were jumping up and down.

  What was going on? Carmen knew the kids liked Mr. Vita. But you’d think Babe Ruth and the Red Sox were coming for dinner.

  The apartment door swung open.

  Mr. Grasso strode in, followed by Mr. Vita.

  The room went strangely quiet. But the air seemed to crackle. Carmen noticed that nobody was looking at Mr. Vita. They were all looking at her.

  And then someone else appeared in the doorway. A smiling gray-haired woman whose eyes blazed like candles.

  Carmen blinked, sure she was dreaming.

  But then before she even r
ealized it, she’d leaped out of the chair. She was rushing forward, hurt leg and all. Two strong arms came around her in a crushing hug.

  It was Nonna.

  * * *

  “I missed you too much,” Nonna said a few minutes later, when she and Carmen were alone in the bedroom, when they’d finally stopped hugging and crying. “I wrote to Mrs. Grasso. Mr. Vita was kind enough to come to Italy, to help me make the journey.”

  So there had been a secret plan. Just not the one Carmen imagined.

  “Did you come here to bring me home?” she asked Nonna, suddenly worried.

  Nonna leaned forward, brushing the hair from Carmen’s eyes. She shook her head.

  “I think this is your home, tesoro,” she said. “Your papa brought you here. And I know how sad the Grassos would be if you left. Especially that trottolino Tony.”

  Carmen looked at Nonna. Had it really been four years since they’d been together? How had Carmen lived without Nonna?

  “Will you stay here with me?” Carmen asked. Anything was possible, right?

  Nonna smiled. “For a while. We’ll see how I like it.”

  Carmen hugged Nonna again. She breathed in Nonna’s familiar smell — of lemons and flowers and the sea, of the village where Carmen was born. She felt a pang in her heart as she realized how much she’d missed Italy. Of course she wanted to go back there. Just not now. And not forever.

  Could she and Nonna have two homes with an ocean in between?

  She opened her mouth to ask. But there was pounding on the door, and restless, excited voices calling to them.

  “Come on!”

  “We’re hungry!”

  “I get to sit next to Nonna at dinner!”

  “No, I do!”

  Nonna stood up. “We better get out there,” she said with a wink.

  They walked through the door holding hands. Holding on tight.

  There would be plenty of time for Nonna and Carmen to talk about what was ahead.

  Right now, the table was set. Dinner was hot.

  And their family was waiting for them.

  Hello, readers,

  It was one of you — an I Survived reader — who suggested that I write about the Boston Molasses Flood. (You readers give me so many great ideas!)

  Like most people, I had never heard of this strange disaster. But of course I was curious. It seemed almost funny — a flood of sweet syrup! Some articles I read had silly titles, like “The Sticky Tsunami” and “The River of Goo.”

  But as I began researching, I quickly understood that there wasn’t anything funny about this deadly disaster. It was tragic, horrifying, and terribly sad. Twenty-one people lost their lives, including two children. Many of the approximately 150 people who were injured never fully recovered, and suffered for as long as they lived.

  What made this event even more tragic was that it could have been prevented. This wasn’t a natural disaster, like a tornado or a hurricane.

  The molasses flood was a “human-made” disaster, caused by people who made bad decisions. That tank didn’t just naturally sprout up in the middle of Boston. People decided to put it there.

  It wasn’t the tank’s fault that it leaked. It was the fault of the company that owned the tank. They didn’t test it properly after it was built, to make sure it was strong enough to hold more than two million gallons of molasses. They didn’t listen to warnings that the tank was dangerous. They showed no care for the men and women and kids who lived and worked in the shadow of the tank.

  And really, they are what this book is about. Like all the books in the I Survived series, this book is a work of historical fiction. That means all the facts are true (that’s the “historical” part). The “fiction” part is the characters, who are from my imagination.

  But these made-up characters are based on real men and women and kids who lived in Boston’s North End at the time of the molasses flood, people I learned about in my research. They were mostly immigrants — people who had moved to America from other countries. The vast majority of those living in the North End at that time came from the southern part of Italy.

  They left behind everything — and everyone — they knew. They crossed the ocean to start new lives in a strange land: America. Between 1880 and the 1920s, more than 23 million immigrants came to America. Of these, five million were from southern Italy.

  Some of you reading this book are new immigrants. You know exactly what it’s like to leave behind the country where you were born. To say good-bye to your home and friends and school. To move to a strange country where you have to learn a new language and customs, to make new friends and eat new foods.

  And if you’re not an immigrant yourself, chances are someone in your family was. Because unless you are a member of a Native American nation or tribe, someone in your family was born somewhere else. They came to America by ship or by plane or on foot, hoping to build a better life in America. If you are African American, your ancestors most likely didn’t choose to come to America. They were captured in their homelands in Africa, brought to America in chains, and forced to work as slaves.

  Do you know the story of how your family came to America? If you don’t, ask your parents or another relative. I wish I knew more details about how my relatives first came to America. The story I know best is about my great-grandmother Elizabeth Yasnitz Rosen. She immigrated to America on her own in 1909, when she was thirteen. She came from Russia, where, because she was Jewish, she and her family faced prejudice and constant threats of violence.

  Her journey to America was difficult. She arrived with no money, no English, no understanding of America. She lived with her older sister, Bessie, who had come a few years before. Their home was a two-room apartment in a crowded and dirty neighborhood, very similar to the one Carmen and Papa moved to in Boston’s North End. Elizabeth went to work at a factory — at the age of thirteen. Her life in America was extremely difficult at first. But like Carmen, she slowly set down roots and came to love America.

  If my great-grandmother hadn’t found the courage to leave Russia and come to America, if she hadn’t been welcomed here, I would not be alive today (and I would not be writing these words for you!).

  Thank you for taking this trip back in time with me, and for inspiring me through the hard work of creating this book.

  As always, I learned so much in my research for this book — so much that I couldn’t fit everything into the story! Here are some interesting facts about the molasses flood and life in America in 1918–1919:

  CLEANING UP AFTER THE MOLASSES FLOOD TOOK MONTHS

  Within minutes of the disaster, the North End waterfront was swarming with police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, and other rescue workers. They worked around the clock searching for victims. They found them buried in the wreckage of buildings, trapped in molasses-flooded basements, and tangled up with twisted metal and wrecked railcars and wagons. What made the rescue efforts more difficult is that the molasses hardened. Rescuers had to use picks and chisels to free some of the bodies.

  Cleaning up was an enormous challenge. Molasses was everywhere — in basements, pooled in the streets, hardened into a thick crust on the sidewalks. Plain water did little to wash it away. Finally, firefighters used a fireboat to spray millions of gallons of salt water from the harbor onto the streets and sidewalks. The salt loosened the molasses so workers could scrub it off.

  The stink of molasses spread far from the North End. It took about six months for the wreckage to be cleared away, and for business at the North End waterfront to get back to normal.

  THE MOLASSES COMPANY REFUSED TO TAKE THE BLAME

  From the start, it was obvious who caused this disaster: the company that owned the tank, United States Industrial Alcohol. They were in a rush to build the tank. They didn’t build it correctly. They didn’t test it properly after it was built. They ignored three years of leaks. One of their own workers, Isaac Gonzalez, was so worried about the tank that he had nightmares. He warned
his bosses, but they shrugged off his warnings. Many people who lived and worked around the tank knew that it was dangerous, and that one day a disaster could happen.

  But USIA refused to admit that the tank it owned was poorly built. Instead, they tried to convince people that someone blew up the tank on purpose. They insisted that someone had thrown dynamite into the tank, and that’s why it exploded.

  Few believed this. An engineer studied the wreckage of the tank. He determined that the steel the company used was not strong enough for a large tank. Also, there weren’t enough rivets to hold the pieces of steel together. The company was supposed to test the tank before filling it with molasses. They should have filled it with water first, all the way to the top, to see if it leaked. But that would have taken time, and cost money. So USIA filled it with only a few inches of water, declared it safe, and then began using it to store molasses.

  Three weeks after the flood, a judge for the city of Boston wrote a report. He rejected the idea that the tank had been bombed. The company’s tank was shoddily built. That’s why it broke apart and caused a deadly disaster.

  USIA WAS PUNISHED FOR CAUSING THE FLOOD

  Nobody from the company went to jail. But victims of the flood and their families got together and sued USIA. The legal case dragged on for six years. In the end, a judge decided that USIA should pay a total of $693,000 to the flood’s victims. That might not sound like much. But today, that money would be worth about ten million dollars.

  And it was an important victory for the innocent people hurt in the flood, and for those who lost fathers, mothers, children, and other loved ones. Because never before in America had a corporation been forced to pay victims when it caused a deadly disaster.

  THE GREAT BOSTON MOLASSES FLOOD MADE US SAFER

  Today, if you owned a company that wanted to build a giant tank, you would need to first get a permit from the city. Your plan would have to be approved by engineers. In other words, there are laws to make sure that nobody builds a tank — or a building, house, or factory — that isn’t safe.