My Dad tells me that when he visited Wisconsin in the early 90s he read a story about a ‘Great Cheese Flood’ that occured in the 1920s. Supposedly, a cheese factory burnt down and the nearby streets were flooded with molten cheese. Is this true? Is it even possible? I’ve searched the web for info to no avail.
The mental image of a town-wide fondue is highly amusing 
Anelie
Why else would they give a town a crazy name like Fondue Lac ?
Ahem, Squink.
Perhaps he’s confused about remembering the great molasses flood in Boston in 1919. A college friend told me his great-grandfather drowned in it that day. Part of the storage tank wall is still standing, btw.
Not in the 1920s, but in the early 1980s. A government warehouse for surplus cheese burned down, filling the streets of … Eau Claire, I think it was … with molten cheese. I remember clipping the article out of the newspaper for the amusment of my non-Wisconsonite friends.
Mind you, there are lots of cheese warehouses in Wisconsin, and lots of fires, so no doubt the cheese-lava effect has happened more than once.
Thankyou Wumpus! My Dad’s quite triumphant over having this outlandish story verified
Anelie
PS Squink: Hehehehehehe
This just happened again back in January of this year! Except it wasn’t cheese, it was butter. A three inch river that eventually clogged fire hoses & a nearby canal.
It was in Portage, Wisconsin, which is about as far south from Green Bay as Eau Claire is east of the Twin Cities (if that made sense?)
“ Melted Butter Floods Into Wisconsin Canal After Fire At Dairy Plant” NBC Chicago
The great butter and cheese fire of Madison WI, 1991
I was just about to post this. I was there; an awful smell pervaded the E. side of town.
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Butter AND cheese? Hope those first responders brought their macaroni.
Reminds me of the Gret London Beer Flood
On Monday 17 October 1814 a bizarre industrial accident in St Giles, London claimed at least eight lives when a three-storey high vat of beer exploded inside a brewery and unleashed a tsunami of porter onto the streets around Tottenham Court Road.
That was a bad one.
Given that beer is Wisconsin’s other major export after cheese, could a repeat occur?
Burning whiskey flooded the streets of Dublin in 1875.