Read on Twitter
So this thread has gotten a lot of attention and a slew of media outlets have picked it up. As someone who grew up in Oregon and heard the “exploding whale” story many times and even studied it at UO journalism school, this thread gets a key part of the story kinda wrong. https://twitter.com/MyDoncaster/status/1247083713428631553
Specifically, this bit: “An ex-member of the military advised George and the other officials that this was waaaay too much [explosives], and just a few sticks of dynamite would be enough. They ignored his advice.” The lesson? “DON’T IGNORE THE ADVICE THAT EXPERTS GIVE YOU.”
Especially right now, that’s a very sound lesson – I’ve read and favorably reviewed @radiofreetom’s book! – but this story in some ways is a really bad example.
The “ex-military” guy, Walt Umenhofer wasn’t some consultant on the project, he was just a vet who’d received explosives training years earlier. He just happened to be Florence, OR that day and he went down to the beach to see what the fuss was about.
He saw what was happening and tried to warn them they were using too much dynamite, and they ignored him. (Since no good deed goes unpunished, a huge chunk of raining blubber crushed the roof of Umenhofer’s brand new Oldsmobile, he’d bought days earlier...
...the dealer’s slogan when he bought it was, no joke, “Get a whale of deal on a new Oldsmobile.”)
So yes, Umenhofer was more of an expert on explosives than the hapless guy in charge of the project, but the lesson here isn’t just “DON’T IGNORE THE ADVICE THAT EXPERTS GIVE YOU.”
It’s also “Sometimes, the random guy walking by knows more about what should be done than the guy the government put in charge.” I don’t think that’s the message anyone behind this thread wants to put out, but those are the facts.
For what it’s worth, Umenhofer died in 2016 and, for you Oregonians, he owned the gun range in Springfield that had the signs near I-5 that advertised paying to come in and shoot a Tommy Gun. Too bad he’s not still with us – would love to know his opinion on all this. FIN
