In the Pacific Northwest the tale of the exploding whale is legend. Back in November 1970 a dead whale had washed up on the beach in Lane County, Oregon. The locals came out in droves to look at it. That is until it started to decay. The stench soon became overwhelming.
That's when the Oregon Department of Transportation stepped in. Since the beaches in Oregon are all public property the Highway Division got the job of whale disposal.
The Highway Division decided they could not bury the eight ton whale. The surf would just expose the rotting mass later on. No one wanted to get close enough to cut it up into chunks. It could not be burned. What to do?
They decided to blow it up! ODOT workers placed 8 cases of dynamite on one side of the whale. The idea was to break it up into enough small pieces that the sea gulls and crabs would quickly feast on what was left.
Well, it didn't go quite as planned. One Portland TV station sent a crew down to capture the event on film. A legend was born. The reporter, Paul Linnman, even wrote a book (The Exploding Whale and Other Remarkable Stories from the Evening News) about the experience many years later. Here's the first line of chapter one:
We could smell it the moment we stepped from the car.
.
First sentence of the next paragraph:
Funny thing about that smell: I would never again think of this day, or what was about to happen, without the horrible odor returning instantly to my memory.
So it is obvious that the Highway Division had to do something about the rotting whale on the beach. It's just that trying to blow it up didn't exactly work the way they thought it would.
Instead of turning the whale meat into zillions of tiny pieces of rapidly decomposing flesh, huge chunks of whale blubber were thrown up into the air which then thudded back to earth. Spectators, who had been watching from a quarter of a mile away, had to run for their lives. One guys car was flattened by a giant chunk of dead whale meat.
From Linnman's book:
It was a nearly new Oldsmobile Regal. A piece of blubber maybe six inches thick, about the size of an end table, had landed on the left rear corner of the Oldmobile's roof. It completely flattend the roof, blowing out its windows and showering the area with broken glass. It didn't appear anyone had been in the vehicle when it was struck, and no one we could see in the immediate area had been injured. The Oldsmobile, however, looked be be a goner.
Try to explain that to your insurance company!
Here's the YouTube link to the news report:
The Exploding Whale
So why bring this up 28+ years later? Well, the very same beach is once again home to another dead whale.
Personally, I think they need to try exploding this new arrival. Sure the Highway Department didn't get it right the first time, but, hey, practice makes perfect! Besides, it would give the 24-hour news channels something to report other than depressing economic news or more Rush Limbaugh footage.
I vote for change in this country!