“Chunks of the animal flew in every direction, and spectators began to scream and run for cover when they glimpsed large pieces soaring directly overhead.” A sedan parked near the onlookers was crushed by a large chunk of blubber. “The beach erupted in a 100-foot-high column of sand and whale,” Larry Bacon reported in the Register-Guard. When Thornton gave the signal, State Highway Division workers set off a half-ton of dynamite. The engineers expected the whale to explode into small pieces, which seagulls and other scavengers would take care of. Navy and munitions experts, Assistant District Highway Engineer George Thornton decided to treat the carcass as a boulder and to use dynamite to dislodge it.Ī crowd of spectators and local reporters gathered on the beach on November 12 about a quarter mile from the carcass. The agency responsible for Oregon beaches, the Oregon State Highway Division (now the Oregon Department of Transportation), was called in to remove the whale. In addition to the stench and the possibility that the body would burst, local officials were concerned that people curious about the carcass might climb on it and fall in.
On November 9, 1970, a forty-five-foot, eight-ton sperm whale washed ashore near Florence on Oregon's south coast.