The Whale That Went Boom: When Oregon Tried to Solve a Problem With Dynamite

there's a particular flavor of institutional thinking where the only tool you have is a hammer so every problem starts to look like a nail mhmm last week we looked at a sixteen year hunt for a killer who didn't exist that was a failure of imagination this week is about a failure of a different kind a very very physical one it begins in november 1970 in florence oregon with an eight ton sperm whale that washed up on the beach the oregon state highway division was responsible for the state's beaches back then so to them this wasn't a biological event it was a public nuisance a very large very smelly boulder blocking a public right of way

and how do highway engineers deal with a large boulder they blow it up of course they do so they consulted the us navy and came up with a number they did the number they landed on was half a ton of dynamite about a thousand pounds there was a military veteran on-site walt eumenhofer who had explosives training he warned them it was far far too much and his warning was noted it was not another military expert suggested that 20 sticks maybe eight pounds of dynamite would have been sufficient but the decision was made half a ton the idea you know was to disintegrate the whale into small bite sized pieces for seagulls and crabs to clean

up a tidy ecological solution that was the stated goal they placed the dynamite on the shore side of the whale thinking the blast would push the remains out to sea but a whale is not a rock no and sand is not a solid surface the engineer in charge george thornton later admitted they hadn't considered how the soft sand would funnel the explosion instead of pushing the whale out it funneled the blast straight up on november 12 at 03:45 in the afternoon they detonated the charge ktu tv reporter paul linman was covering it he was initially annoyed by the assignment until he heard dynamite was involved his report became legendary he had a line the humor

of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a more serious tone as the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds which is a very precise description of what happened large chunks of whale blubber were launched into the air debris flew up to 800 feet away raining down on the crowd of spectators who had gathered to watch including on a brand new oldsmobile 88 regency yes that car belonged to walt eumenhofer the same man who had warned them about using too much dynamite a large piece of blubber completely crushed its roof there's a kind of cosmic perfection to that it's a tidy narrative loop the worst part though wasn't just the flying debris what was the

worst part after the smoke cleared and the blubber stopped falling most of the whale was still there the explosion had only managed to blow a large hole in it the problem remained only now it was surrounded by a debris field so the seagulls did not in fact handle the cleanup the highway crew had to handle the cleanup by hand the engineer in charge george thornton was quoted immediately after the blast saying it went just right he did he later conceded that perhaps the blast radius was a little larger than anticipated you know this story became one of the internet's first viral videos in the nineties decades after the fact people just couldn't believe it was

real but it was and it led to real changes today the standard procedure is to bury a whale on-site or if possible tow the carcass far out to sea explosives are no longer considered a viable tool it seems like a lesson that should not have required a field test you would think but sometimes the most obvious lessons are the ones learned most spectacularly florence oregon now has an exploding whale memorial park so the event is not forgotten it's commemorated it serves as a permanent reminder that if your only tool is a half ton of dynamite you should probably find a different problem or just use a lot less dynamite