SIUSLAW NEWS | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2018 | 9A
WHALE from page 1A
“Blasted blubber”
“He brought up the idea at
dinner one night and all of a
sudden, here we are,” Raia said,
explaining how the Monday
night reenactment came about.
Raia, whose family is friends
with Spangler, was just looking
for something fun to do. The
dinner conversation turned to
the upcoming anniversary of the
whale.
“We thought, ‘Why not just
make this happen, what’s the
harm in it?’” Spangler said. “It
sounded fun, and the town
needs silly stuff like this. With
a median age here in the 60s, it
can make things a little tough for
those who aren’t in their 60s.”
Raia, a 15-year-old, thought
it would be fun to recreate the
incident through a sort of inter-
pretive dance. She wrangled her
friends and family to play the
whale, and Spangler worked on
getting the props. The script for
the reenactment came from a
now infamous news report that
has become famous throughout
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The legend began in 1970
when an 8-ton sperm whale,
45-feet in length, washed up on
shore just south of Florence. It
was a curiosity for residents and
beachcombers at the time, but
soon became a bit of a problem
as the stench of rotting whale
began to overtake the dunes.
Since Oregon beaches are a
public right of way (the speed
limit is 25 mph, with pedestrians
having the right-of-way), the
Oregon State Highway Division
(now the Oregon Department of
Transportation) was tasked with
cleaning it up.
The idea of burying the whale
was floated but turned down:
The ocean tides would surely
uncover the beached beast. It
could have been cut up to pieces,
but who would want to do that?
So, according to the Oregon
Encyclopedia, Assistant Dis-
trict Highway Engineer George
Thornton consulted with a U.S.
Navy munitions expert about
the issue and decided to treat
the carcass as a boulder, using
half-a-ton of dynamite to blast it
to smithereens. Scavengers such
as seagulls, crabs and “whatnot”
would gulp up the remainders.
KATU television news report-
er Paul Linnman showed up to
cover the event and interviewed
Thornton just before the whale
demolition.
“Well I’m confident that it will
work,” Thornton said. “The only
thing is we’re not sure just exact-
ly how much explosives it’ll take
to disintegrate this.”
“Is there any chance it might
be more than a one-day job?”
Linnman asked.
“If there’s any large chunks
left,” Thornton replied. “We may
have to do some other clean up,
possibly set another charge.”
The dynamite was placed on
the leeward side of the whale,
in hopes that the majority of
the explosion would go out to
sea. Then, when the tide washed
back in, highway crews would
haul away or bury what the
seagulls didn’t eat.
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PHOTO BY JARED ANDERSON/
SIUSLAW NEWS
On the 48th anniver-
sary of Oregon's
exploding whale, a
group of Florentines
came together to
reenact the explo-
sion through “inter-
pretive dance” on
the beach near
Driftwood Shores.
At 3:30 p.m., police began
moving the 75-odd spectators
back to safety, a quarter of a mile
away unless things went wrong
which, of course, they did.
At 3:45 p.m., Thornton gave
the signal to push the plunger,
and a plume of sand and whale
100 feet high erupted into the
air.
The initial explosion brought
cheers from the onlookers. A
moment later, one woman said,
“Here comes pieces of… MY
GOD!”
“The humor of the entire situ-
ation suddenly gave way to a run
for survival as huge chunks of
whale blubber fell everywhere,”
Linnman reported. “Pieces
of meat passed high over our
heads, while others were falling
at our feet.”
Multiple cars were hit with the
ensuing debris.
“My insurance company will
never believe it,” spectator Wal-
ter F. Umenhofer told the Siu-
slaw News in 1970. His car was
crushed by a three-foot-square
hunk of blubber.
“The blast blasted blubber be-
yond all believable bounds,” Lin-
nman reported.
The resulting remains were
too big for any seagull to han-
dle, and it didn’t matter anyway.
They were all scared off, despite
the abundance of bits of whale
spread along the beach. Work
began on burying the hundreds
of chunks that were strewn
across the area.
This is the incident that played
out on Monday night, sans cars
being flattened and the spray-
ing of guts. One of Raia’s friends
played Linnman, who gave a
word-for-word report over the
loudspeaker. Spangler played
Thornton and Raia and the rest
of her friends played the whale.
Just after the “whale” explod-
ed, the 1980s pop hit “Don’t you
Forget About Me” played over
loudspeakers as the participants
laughed and hugged with the 20
or so onlookers. A small dance
party ensued in what Spangler
and Raia deemed a successful
evening. However, the event did
not come without its own con-
troversy, as Florence’s exploding
whale is something of a touchy
subject for some in town.
41 beached sperm whales
“I’ve gotten some feedback
from people, asking, ‘Why
would you do that, it’s an em-
barrassment to the town?’”
Spangler said. “But it hap-
pened. And it’s really funny!
The original news footage is
hilarious and amazing. Sure,
it’s not the proudest moment
of well-thought-out-ness. But
it’s a common occurrence, and
disposal methods vary. This was
not one of the better ones.”
Raia agreed, saying, “In my
opinion, it was a really stupid
idea. Yeah, the whale is going
to disintegrate. How would that
work?”
In fact, the embarrassment of
the incident occurred soon after
the whale first exploded. One
songwriter was reported look-
ing for a group to record his lat-
est ballad, “Blow Whale Blow,”
according to the Siuslaw News
in 1970. Residents visiting the
South Jetty were seen carrying
gas masks, and sea gulls contin-
ued to avoid the area.
But Gunderson, whose shirt
art depicts the beached whale in
mid-explosion, thought of the
incident a little differently.
“We were really embarrassed
for a long time, but I disagree
with that,” he said. “It was a sci-
entific experiment. We didn’t
know what was going to happen,
and now we know. We don’t do
it anymore.”
Actually, dynamite has been
used to explode whales since
1970. In 2001, the carcass of a
Southern Right whale floating
off the coast of Southern Aus-
tralia led to a school of sharks
feeding on it, and curious boat-
ers coming to see the frenzy. In
fact, the boaters made the hab-
it of actually climbing onto the
dead whale for laughs, includ-
ing a small child.
The incident was becoming
untenable, so authorities decid-
ed to use explosives to blow up
the belly of the whale.
And sometimes beached
whales explode without the help
of TNT. Putrefaction of beached
whales builds up gases such as
ammonia, hydrogen, methane
and sulfide, which can swell
the body. In 2004, biologists
were transporting a dead sperm
whale from a beach through the
city of Tainan in Taiwan when
the whale accidentally explod-
ed, creating a river of blood and
guts down city streets.
An unexpected explosion of a
whale became an internet meme
in 2013 when biologists on the
Faroe Islands attempted to cut
up a beached sperm whale to
harvest the bones for a muse-
um exhibit. A video shows a
biologist, dressed in an orange
hazmat suit, carefully cutting
into the whale when suddenly
a geyser of guts came explod-
ing out. The biologist was un-
harmed as they ran like crazy
from the gushing gore.
But Gunderson is right: Most
whale disposals are not done
through explosives.
“And the people who blow it
up usually don’t do it twice,” he
said.
The Oregon Highway Divi-
sion learned their lesson from
1970. In 1979, 41 sperm whales
beached themselves near the
same location in Florence, and
the idea of dynamiting was
quickly passed over. Instead, the
whales were buried in the sand.
And Florence had hoped
the tale of the exploding whale
would be buried in the sand as
well, until 1990 — when Pulit-
zer Prize winning writing Dave
Barry wrote in his syndicated
column about the event, having
just viewed the Linnman video.
“I am absolutely not making
this incident up; in fact, I have
it all on videotape,” Barry wrote
before going into a play-by-play
of the explosion.
“There was no sign of the sea
gulls, who had no doubt perma-
nently relocated in Brazil,” Bar-
ry wrote. “This is a very sober-
ing videotape.”
In 1994, an abridged version
of the article was re-posted on
the internet, but without Barry’s
name attached to it. Readers be-
lieved that the exploding whale
incident had just occurred and
freaked out, flooding ODOT
with outraged calls. It’s at this
point Florence’s exploding
whale became one of the first
viral internet stories.
By the time YouTube came
around and the KATU video
was uploaded, the story was a
worldwide sensation. As of this
writing, various postings of the
video have garnered over 10
million views.
“I’m originally from Texas,
and I knew about this before I
moved here,” Spangler said. “It
is a big thing, and that’s really
awesome.”
In fact, Florence’s exploding
whale is a worldwide phenom-
enon.
“I’m blinded with whale guts!”
The go-to resource for ex-
ploding whale information is
the website theexplodingwhale.
com, created by Steve and Jen
Hackstadt. The site began in
the early 1990s on a webserver
in the Department of Computer
and Information Science at the
University of Oregon to help
spread the KATU video. Soon,
other information about the in-
cident was added, and now the
site is home to dozens of arti-
cles and videos discussing ex-
ploding whales throughout the
world.
Here are just some of the pop
culture gems the website lists
when it comes to topic of ex-
ploding whales.
See WHALE page 10A
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