Most non-water floods (excluding mudflows, oil spills, or volcanic lahars) involve storage facilities suddenly releasing liquids, or industrial retaining reservoirs releasing toxic waste. Storage facility incidents usually cover a small area but can be catastrophic in cities. For example, a molasses tank failure in 1919 led to the Great Molasses Flood that killed 21 people in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Industrial retaining reservoirs are often used to store toxic waste, and when they fail they can flood a large area, causing physical and environmental damage. The 2010 failure of a reservoir at the Ajka alumina plant in Hungary flooded a small town and killed several, while the cleanup from the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant spill in Tennessee, United States, took several years and killed at least 40 workers involved.
List
+ List of non-water floods Name Date Volume (litres) Composition Location London Beer Flood 17 October 1814 Beer London, England Dublin whiskey fire 18 June 1875 Whiskey Dublin, Ireland Great Molasses Flood 15 January 1919 Molasses Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. Rockwood & Company shipping department fire 12 May 1919 Molten chocolate and butter New York City, U.S. Aberfan disaster 21 October 1966 Mine spoil and water Aberfan, Wales, UK Church Rock uranium mill spill 16 July 1979 Uranium tailings Church Rock, New Mexico, U.S. Wisconsin butter flood 3 May 1991 Butter, cheese, and processed meat Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. Doñana disaster 25 April 1998 Mine tailings Aznalcóllar, Andalusia, Spain 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill 30 January 2000 Mine tailings with cyanide Baia Mare, Romania Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill 22 December 2008 Coal byproducts mixed with water Kingston, Tennessee, U.S. Ajka alumina plant accident 4 October 2010 Bauxite residue mixed with water (caustic sludge, red in color) Ajka, Hungary Mount Polley Mine 4 August 2014 Mine tailings - nickel, arsenic, copper, lead and compounds thereof near Likely, British Columbia Mariana dam disaster 5 November 2015 Tailings mixed with water Mariana, Brazil Pepsi fruit juice flood 25 April 2017 Fruit and vegetable juices Lebedyan, Russia Levira Distiller wine flood 10 September 2023 Red wine São Lourenço do Bairro, Portugal
See also List of floods
References