A river of butter: Madison's biggest fire ever
The great butter and cheese fire of 1991
On May 3, 1991, a forklift battery malfunction sparked a blaze at Madison's Central Storage & Warehouse, a 500,000-square-foot facility holding 20 million pounds of government surplus butter, cheese, and meat. The fire burned for over a week, sending a five-foot-deep river of melted butter through the streets. Firefighters waded chest-deep in butter, the DNR built emergency dams to protect Starkweather Creek, and cleanup cost $550,000. Losses reached $70 million in contents.
It literally was a river of butter.
- ajb
Wacky stuff. I guess one development since then is the Vacuum Excavator, I think they only started being built in the 90s. So you could send some round to suck up the cheese, but I'm not sure there would be enough capacity in the area as they are a niche tool (for excavating around buried services).
- DicIfTEx
A devastating 1999 fire in a tunnel connecting France and Italy was also caused by a truck full of flour and margarine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_Tunnel_fire
- mrami
Reminiscent of the Molasses Flood, though that was more tragic. Scale is a double-edged sword. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood