11. Getting Rid of a Dead Beached Whale With TNT
In November of 1970, the Oregon State Highway Division not only had a problem on its hands, but a stinking whale of a problem. What to do with a 45-foot, 8-ton sperm whale, whose rotting carcass had washed up on a beach near the small coastal town of Florence, in Lane County, Oregon? Letting nature take its course, and allowing the whale’s carcass to decompose, was one option. However, the good people of nearby Florence were not too keen on spending the next few years enduring the stench of a rotting whale. Nor were they comfortable with the idea of swimming in waters reeking of whale runoff. It had been so long since a dead whale had washed up in the region, that nobody could remember how to get rid of one.
Without a frame of reference, the Highway Division concluded that dragging the behemoth off and burying it was not a good option, because decomposition gasses would destabilize the grave and uncover it. Cutting it up and then burying it would reduce that risk, but nobody could be found willing to chop up the stinking carcass. So the authorities turned to dynamite: 20 cases, or half a ton of it. A military veteran with explosives training happened to be in the area, and he warned that 20 cases of dynamite were way too much. His advice that 20 sticks of dynamite would be enough was ignored by the authorities, who hoped that the blast would disintegrate the whale, with the resulting small pieces getting consumed by scavengers.
