When one moves to a new state, it’s kind of like marrying into a family, and hearing all of the old stories at Thanksgiving that are guaranteed to embarrass its protagonists, over and over every year. It wasn’t long after moving to Oregon that we got wind of this one, the notorious exploding whale on the beach in Florence. And now that its Oregon Dept. of Transportation protagonist has passed away, we can retell it again, knowing that he won’t be embarrassed this time.
Here’s the video of that fateful decision by George Thornton, an ODOT engineer, to deal with a giant beached dead sperm whale by blowing it up, with the intended effect of dispersing its carcass so that scavengers would feed on the tiny chunks. Sightseers were kept a quarter mile away, but that wasn’t nearly far enough as they’re covered with bits of flying goo. Fortunately, none were hit by the larger chunks, unlike the brand new Olds 98 in the parking lot. Well, the rest is history, and Thornton’s ill-fated explosion went viral on the internet before that term was properly coined.
Thornton declined for decades to talk about the mishap, except to say that “it blew up in my face”.
I’m pretty sure that’s an Olds 98, anyway bummer either way, hope they had flying whale blubber insurance.
Oops. You’re right; I never really took a close look at it. Will fix the headline.
I think in a longer version of this video the owner said it was an Olds 98 Regency which would certainly look like a Cadillac from the side view in a grainy video. 🙂
Oops Roger beat me to it.
It was the reporter in the clip who identified as such,
guess he wasn’t a car guy.
I found a cleaned up version of the original news clip, and have put that in now. The video is much clearer, and it’s obvious that it was an Olds.
Here’s another version where the Olds is identified as a ’69. Ironically the owner of the Olds says in this video that he warned Thornton that everybody was still too close to the blast site, then his car gets flattened.
That one is even better…replaced it again!
Call me Ishmael…er…Olds 98!
This is a classic.
And the Olds is no loss; it was in that awful brown.
I’d love to see the insurance guys face when he hears how the Olds was flattened by bits of whale
’98s were the prolific luxury car in my childhood. Several friends of my parents had them, including my best friend and neighbor.
The owner of the 98 noted it was a Regency – a trim line that did not appear until 1972. I’m guessing he’s owned several 98’s over the years, and got a bit confused.
What he has is clearly either a ’69 or ’70 Ninety-Eight Holiday Sedan – which lacked the B pillar. Olds was a bit odd in the ’65-’70 models. From what I can tell, their top shelf LS or “Luxury Sedan” was only available on the “Pillard Hardtop” models.
I always admired the ’98s, and generally prefer the pillarless models. So, I probably would have been with him in choosing the Holiday Sedan over the base trim Town Sedan or the pillard Luxury Sedan. The Luxury Sedan was only $75.00 more than the Holiday, so the differences were likely minimal.
You might wonder why the Dept. of Transportation was called in to deal with a dead whale. (Not because of their experience keeping 1950s land barge carcasses off our highways.)
Before they built US 101 alongside and through the Coast Range, the beaches were about the only way to get up and down the coast. So in 1913 they declared the entire length of the ocean shore from Washington to California as a state highway. Our open beaches law descended from that. The state parks and recreation department, which helps maintain the beaches, is part of ODOT too.
Drive and live in Oregon for awhile and you won’t find this episode in ODOT history all that surprising.
That Oldsmobile looks like some of my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars after a day of “playing” with them. It never occurred to me that I could smash in the roof with flying whale blubber, though.
I think I want to work for ODOT. I mean, a job where you get to blow stuff up? I spent much of my childhood training for such a job.