Have I told you guys about the Fake Alaskan Volcano Eruption of April Fools 1974?
*sits down* Gather round, kiddies. its Story Time with Viv!
Whoa you calling me Tori was really weird for a second, not in a bad oh god no kinda way, but in a “who the hell is Bucky” kinda way
ANYWAY, gather round friends, and I will tell you the only story you need to hear if you want to really understand my home state.
APRIL 1ST, 1974
Residents of Sitka, Alaska woke up to a rare beautiful clear day(it rains all the damn time in Southeast Alaska), the sun was out, the sky was blue, and black smoke was rising from Mt Edgecumbe
Now Mt Edgecumbe is only 18 miles from Sitka
And it’s a dormant volcano that hadn’t erupted for thousands of years, so to see this:
was very unusual, and rather worrying.
“Shit,” the Sitkans thought, “we may be Alaskans and pretty weird about responding to danger, but even we know this might be bad”.
SO the Coast Guard was called!
They flew a helicopter up right away and guess what they found?
Was it:
nope
Maybe it was:
Nuh huh, sorry
It couldn’t POSSIBLY be:
God no, but that would be hella rad
It was this:
(this is not an accurate image, there were only 70 tires in real life)
Turned out that a 54 year old local dude named Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar and some buddies had flown the tires up early that morning and he’d come up with the prank in 1970 but hadn’t been able to do it until ‘74 because all the other years had terrible weather on April Fools.
(He’d woken up that day, saw the clear sky and told his wife, Patty, “I have to go do it today” to which she replied “Just don’t make an ass of yourself” which delights me no end)
Porky has actually warned the police he was going to do this and also informed the FAA (gotta get that flight plan approved to haul those tires up) but, and oh god I love this, TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE COAST GUARD
Luckily for him the Coasties thought this was the funniest fucking thing they had ever seen in their goddamn lives, and as it turned out, residents of Sitka agreed!
The story ended up exploding(ah ha ha do you get it? because volcano?) and national newspapers even covered it.
But Porky’s favourite response was a letter he got after the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 that read:
“This time, you little bastard, you’ve gone too far.”
I’ve been told, though I can’t find any sources to verify this, that when he died another fire was set in the volcano by the town to honor him.
And that’s the story of how a man faked a volcanic eruption and became a state hero.
