December 17, 2004 5:38 AM

What NOT to do with a dead whale

Thar she blows, er, blows up! (thanks, Jeremy and Tanya!)

Of course, this sort of problem doesn’t crop up much here on the Texas Gulf Coast, but when I lived in Oregon, it was no laughing matter. How DO you dispose of a 45-foot-long, 8-ton whale? It’s not as if you can just throw it in the back of someone’s F-250 and drive it to a seafood restaurant.

[W]e dug into our video archives and resurrected the story about the dead whale, a half ton of dynamite, and bits of blubber falling from the sky.

Unable to find a use for it, and unsure how best to dispose of it, the Department of Transportation blew up a dead whale on the Oregon coast in November of 1970.

Why?

The Oregon Highway Division not only had a whale of a problem on its hands, but a stinky whale of a problem—what to do with one 45 foot, 8 ton whale, dead on arrival on a beach near Florence.

It had been so long since a whale had washed up in Lane County, that no one could remember how to get rid of one.

In selecting its battle plan, the Highway Division decided the carcass couldn’t be buried because it might be uncovered, it couldn’t be cut up and then buried because no one wanted to cut it up, and it couldn’t be burned, so dynamite it was—some 20 cases, or a half ton of it.

Anything left over, officials reasoned, would be taken care of by seagulls and other scavengers.

The KATU cameras stopped rolling immediately after the blast, but Linnman recalls making his way out of the area as huge chunks of blubber fell everywhere.

A parked car over a quarter of a mile from the blast site was the target of one last chunk. Fortunately, no one was hurt as badly as the car. However, everyone was covered with small particles of dead whale.

Ewww…. Left unasked, and perhaps it’s better that way, is the question of how long the whale had been dead. I do feel sorry for the owner of the car, though. Try explaining THAT one to your insurance company….

(You can watch the video of the story here)

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on December 17, 2004 5:38 AM.

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