Waking up to a dormant volcano about to erupt is not a good start to the day
A dormant volcano doesn’t mean that one day it can’t wake up and start to spew volcanic ash and molten lava over the local inhabitants. There are many countries around the world that have these seemingly harmless timebombs sleeping close to cities and towns, the residents retiring to their beds each night under a false sense of security that since it hasn’t exploded in the last one hundred years, why would it explode now?
In Alaska the residents of Sitka had become very accustomed to the sight of Mount Edgecumbe on the horizon, dormant, still, just a monument to be occasionally talked about.
Imagine their surprise, and mounting horror, when one morning a thick plume of smoke could be seen emanating from the crater. Police, firefighters, and the Coast Guard immediately began to receive a slew of concerned calls. Was the volcano after all these years about to erupt? Should they evacuate?
A Coast Guard helicopter was quickly sent up to evaluate the situation, fearing the worst.
One of the residents watching the unfolding drama was 50-year-old Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar. Except, unlike most of the citizens of Sitka, he didn’t have a concerned look on his face, but one of mischief.
It transpired that for the last 3 years he had been patiently stockpiling used car parts with the help of some friends, planning a surprise for the town.
So, when the pilot peered into the smoldering crater, he was expecting to see a bubbling river of lava about to spew over the crater and braced himself for the bad news. What he saw instead through the thick, black smoke roiling up into the sky, was a huge pile of burning tires, and a big painted sign that said “April Fool.”
Oliver ‘Porky’ Bickar became famous, or infamous, for this stunt, depending on if your point of view that day was from the town below, or from a few hundred miles away reading the headlines in your local paper.
Fortunately, the residents saw the funny side once they realized that death was not imminent and that this clever prank, executed in their little town in Alaska, had launched them into the limelight as the story continued to erupt around the world.