A Very Sticky Situation

The maple syrup incident that occurred here in Riverville was a great sticky mess, but it was nowhere nearly as bad as the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, as seen in the photo above.

Last Friday, it was a normal day in Riverville, the town in which Animal Adventures Inc. is located. Birds were chirping, the sun was shining, people were walking to their lunch breaks and children were learning new things in school. I was sitting at my desk finalizing last week's article. But the peacefulness changed at 11:48 a.m. when people near the Dandy Candy Factory heard a loud rumbling noise. People looked at the factory and realized that the sound was coming from a 50-foot tall, storage tank that was 90 feet in diameter filled with 2,300,000 gallons of maple syrup. Suddenly the tank exploded and 2,300,000 gallons of maple syrup spewed out as if from a raging volcano!

Around this time of year, people – kids especially – love candy and sweets, but this was too much! The maple syrup began rapidly flowing through the surrounding area. People began running in terror from the sweet-tasting flood. Mr. Fish came to my office to inform me of what was happening elsewhere in town, so my trusty, junior photographer, Daniel P. Smithwater, and I headed to the scene of the mayhem. Upon arrival, we found ourselves instantly surrounded by city officials – firefighters and police officers – who tried to keep the crowds back and loads of civilians who all wanted to see the action. I couldn't believe my eyes! Loads of maple syrup was flowing freely down the street at 35 mph. Upon its initial release, the wave of syrup was 25 or so feet high and as it continued along its path of stickiness, it leveled out to 3 feet in depth!

I spoke with police officer David Tooters to learn more about the situation at hand. He is quoted for saying, “No one knows as of yet why this happened, but we do know that we've got to rescue as many people as we can before anyone gets hurt. Maple syrup is only good in small doses.” Due to the dangers of the situation, I wasn't able to get very close, but from what I could see, the syrup was a powerful force. Some people were being quickly swept away by the torrent. At times, the firefighters blasted the maple syrup with high-pressure water hoses to make a pathway to the helpless people stuck in syrup. At one point during the day, the syrup even trapped someone's horse! Fortunately police were able to rescue the creature without injury to themselves or the animal.

After what seemed like hours of saving people and animals from the mess, some large snowplows were brought in to move the syrup. This went on until about 6:00 p.m. and finally the majority of the syrup had been swept away to someplace where it would be of no more danger. (I was unable to verify where). One question that was still on my mind was why the syrup exploded in the first place. To answer this question, I checked with CEO of the Dandy Candy Factory, Danny Scrumptious. He is quoted for saying, “Well at the time we were heating the maple syrup because we were preparing to start packaging it up to ship to grocery stores, and one of my workers, named Phil Tumor, was in charge of the operation. Phil decided to take a lunch break, accidentally left the heater on and the heat pressure built up so much that . . . well, I think we all know what happened.”

Then, I asked Danny if they had ideas on how to prevent this from happening again. “Of course we do,” Danny says, “for starters, we're not going to allow people working with the maple syrup to take lunch breaks or any type of breaks until after the heating process is over. We're also going to make some adjustments to how the whole system is run. We definitely don't want this to happen again, because not only was that lots of money wasted, but civilians' lives were put in danger.”

Thanks to the quick work of city officials, the syrup was cleaned up and no one was injured in the event. Now that its over, what happened today brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, “There is such a thing as too much sweets.” Keep that in mind this October 31st!

Written by: Mr. Smiley
Photographer: Daniel P. Smithwater
Edited by: Christian Ryan

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