© 2006 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/thar-she-blows/
This article is marked as 'retired'. The information here may be out of date, incomplete, and/or incorrect.
What do you do if an eight-ton sperm whale beaches itself in your town and dies?
This was the dilemma of the town of Florence, OR in 1970. The enormous corpse was stuck on their beach and beginning to rot, creating a public health hazard, an eye-sore, and a truly amazing stink. They obviously couldn’t simply leave the whale there to rot, but they couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it. So they turned the problem over to the Oregon Highway Division. The OHD came up with several possible methods of getting rid of the whale, ranging from burying it, to hacking it apart manually, but none of them seemed satisfactory. Finally they decided, in consultation with the US Navy, to deal with it as they would deal with any other large obstruction (read boulder).
They decided to use dynamite.
The theory was that by using dynamite, the whale’s corpse could be broken down into smaller hunks that natural scavengers such as gulls and raccoons would quickly dispose of. It would prevent having to find someone willing to hack apart eight tons of decomposing flesh, and they could avoid the risk of having the body undug and exposed again, which was a concern should they bury it. So the engineer in charge decided on what seemed like an adequate amount of explosives – half a ton – and the charges were packed around the body, while a slew of curious people and a local news crew gathered around to watch the event. Not too closely around – spectators were kept a good distance from the actual detonation site – but within good and clear view.
It was still too close.
When the dynamite went off, the whale vanished in a cloud of sand and debris, but almost immediately it became apparent that the cloud was spreading far and fast, and had an alarming amount of red stuff in it. Spectators began running as they were pelted with both a fine mist, and larger hunks of whale blubber. A car parked quarter of a mile away was totalled when a particularly large piece of blubber landed on top of it, crushing the roof. Fortunately no one was hurt, though many were disgusted and in dire need of showers.
The worst thing is that when the cloud cleared away, most of the whale corpse was still there. The Highway Department still had to send in workers to haul it away.
Fortunately for the rest of us, this event seems to have acted as an object lesson. Since that memorable day no whales have been deliberately blown up while on shore in the US. The current preferred disposal method (based on a brief internet survey), seems to be to tow the corpse out to sea, and then blow it up. The whale then sinks, preventing it from washing ashore again. Not necessarily the most aesthetic method of disposal, but at least you don’t have to hose down the bystanders.
Exploding whale site and video
© 2006 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/retired/thar-she-blows/
Since you enjoyed our work enough to print it out, and read it clear to the end, would you consider donating a few dollars at https://www.damninteresting.com/donate ?
Woa, that’s something else! I mean all that dynamite and the whale was STILL there!!!!!
Does it happen a lot that whales wash ashore?
This is an internet classic. :)
It’s raining meat!
What a wonderful story! That should be filed under: “really stupid things that were witnessed by a large group of people that were very sorry afterwards” :-)
Thanks…. I was sitting here eating my lunch….. :P
That’s one whale of a tale =P I’ll bet that whale just THOUGHT it had a blow hole before.
Definitely falls under the “Hey y’all, watch this!” category.
From the video
the Blast, blasted blubber beyond all beleivable bounds :p
priceless
He ain’t heavy, he’s my blubber…
Should have used the “Tsar Bomba”
Couldn’t find anyone to cut it up? That’s the very definition of “Community Service” if you ask me.
Excellent thought there Furnace.
Should have sold it to the Japanese for
lunchresearch.wow, thats pretty crazy- blowing up a whale. But blowing something that massive would create massive debris, and thats not good when its a body composed of flesh,
why didnt they just make consumption use of the fish, that would work, and they’d make alot of money too.
Ewwwww… That is unfortunately how some people try to justify their existence…
By the time they got around to doing something about the body is was rotting and diseased (and quite smelly as a result).
How unintelligent. The engineer forgot that the whale might dirty the place. I wonder if that car was insured.
HA!
Didn’t they see Armageddon? You can’t just place a nuke on the outside..you gotta drill a hole and put it in the center ;) LOL….oh lord…i wonder how long that engineer kept his job? Also kind of reminds me of War of the worlds where the people blow up and get other people “dusty” EW!
Couldn’t they have made dog food out of it?
This story has ALWAYS cracked me up… especially since I first read Dave Barry’s journalistic endeavors to describe it… http://www.perp.com/whale/barry.html you may want to read this and watch the video!
If the car WAS insured, how would you explain your car being totalled by a hunk of whale blubber to an insurance company? THERE’s a hell of a story!
Hehe. Back in my farm days, I found one of the cow’s dead (and very bloated). She had fallen down into a sinkhole that had been a refuse pit for building material, and had died there. The farm manager didn’t want to have to drag the cow out of the hole and then bury her, and see that there was already an abundance of fuel, he decided to cremate her.
Here is where he made his mistake, Methane is very explosive. He reported all he heard was a slight hiss before the thunderclap knocked him on his butt and covered him with goo.
I never think about this without getting a good chuckle.
That was one firework show I am proud to have missed.
I want to know why this wasn’t in my book of the 100 most notable incidents of the 20th century!?
In 5Th grade, I had a crush on a boy named Mark… Mark got a BB gun for Christmas, and quickly became a crack shot.
But Mark had a mean streak in him, and used his skill to no good. He would “wing” a bird, usually sparrows, and then insert a firecracker in its rear vent , light it and let the bird fly off. A few feet into the air and the results were much the same as those in the article.
I hated him after that.
Wonder where he is now? Maybe Florence, OR . LOL…
my parents camped right next to wear the whale was at the time. when they inploded the whale they had to clean whale guts off the roof of there tent. they told me that they smelled like whale guts for monthes. that would suck out loud.
Only half a ton of dynamite? That’s far to little. They should have used somewhere on the order of 15-20 tons.
That must have been a sight to see. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea at the time. But jeez, what were they thinking. Apparently they weren’t. Now all they do is tow them out to sea. They could beef it up a bit and blow it up in the sea. Talk about a feeding frenzy.
And thus another example more of the military mind at work.
Everyone who questions the decision of the dynamite is forgetting an important facet of the male mind; i.e. the powerful urge to blow crap up, at any and every opportunity. You know the words, “Yeah, but think how BAD@$$ it would be if we used freaking DYNAMITE!” were spoken at some point in the discussion. This was more of a thin excuse than a bad decision.
sounds like a bunch of rednecks.