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| Bane Thomas, 13, of Avon stuffs a garbage bag full of Doritos that washed up on shore Thursday in Frisco. The container holding the chips, seen in the background, was broken open by charter boat captains.
(Chris Curry/The Virginian-Pilot) |
By catherine kozak
The Virginian-Pilot
FRISCO — A tractor-trailer-size container filled with thousands of bags of Doritos washed up here early Thursday, prompting Hatteras Islanders to summon their inner scavengers.
After drifting south for several days in the Atlantic, the container veered landward at Diamond Shoals off Cape Point and came to rest in the wash south of the Cape Hatteras Fishing Pier in Frisco as the tide came in.
Steve Hissey, who runs the tackle shop at Teach’s Lair marina in Hatteras, received a call from a charter boat captain.
“How’s the fishing?” Hissey asked.
“I got two stripers and 35 bags of Doritos,” the captain answered.
Hissey said charter captains were angling for striped bass off the shoals when they spotted the container, broke it open and helped themselves.
Long before National Park Service ranger Brad Griest learned that the cargo container had beached, Hatteras Islanders were busy with their time-honored tradition of wreck salvage. A stream of folks stuffed large garbage bags with Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese and Spicy Nacho Doritos.
Strewn across the beach, the red and blue bags were each marked “export.”
One person filled a truck with them. Others carted off armloads of the bags, which were mostly undamaged.
“Just helping with cleanup,” Frisco resident Parc Greene, clutching a garbage bag, told Griest, who waved him ahead.
David Dixon, an Avon attorney and amateur videographer, wasted no time in taking video footage to make a 30-second commercial. Doritos is running a promotion that invites fans to post their own homemade commercials. The best one will be broadcast during the Super Bowl on Feb. 4, said spokeswoman Aurora Gonzalez of Texas-based Frito-Lay, the maker of Doritos.
Gonzalez had no information on the beached Doritos.
When the park service managed by mid afternoon Thursday to get the shipping container locked and removed, it still held an undetermined number of boxed chips.
The Coast Guard has not yet tracked down the ship that lost the container, likely during last week’s nor’easter, said Petty Officer Kevin Schneider of the Marine Safety Team in Elizabeth City.
Schneider said the team is responsible for cleaning up a hazardous material, such as an oil spill. There may be some argument to be made about the health hazard of chips, he said, but the risk didn’t quite qualify.
“When I found out it’s Doritos, it’s pretty much out of our jurisdiction,” he said. “It’s definitely litter, but it’s not a contaminant.”
Irene Nolan, editor of The Island Breeze, contributed to this report.
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not theft / expensive homes
Maritime law would apply here and this would not be theft, the container would be salvage and free for the taking. In fact the charter captain could have legally kept the entire container or sold it if he had recovered it.
My family owns one of those "expensive" beach houses right there in Frisco and it should be noted those houses provide a lot of tax dollars for the year around residents. It's a two way street. One should ask where all the money is being spent, the part-time residents don't get to vote on those matters. Nor do they "consume" many of the services like the new school. I remember that it was "expensive" on the outerbanks compared to the mainland even back in the 60's when there was very little out there.
Hey just think of how fast the beach would have been cleaned up if a bale of pot had washed ashore first!
Most of those fancy expensive homes you are talking about belong to people that don't live here on Hatteras Island. They belong to people from places like New Jersey, New York, and Virginia Beach. Those of us who are permanent residents mostly live in lower-average homes and struggle every year to pay home owner taxes because of the tourists who buy these beach homes to rent them out for even more money.
Calling everyone thieves is ridiculous. If you read Maritime Laws you would understand that this container doesn't even apply to US law. Also, if Frito Lay were to try and put these bags of chips back on market, they could very well end up with a lawsuit being as though the bags washed up on shore from the ocean. I'm sure there are damaged bags with plenty of salt water and sand in them.
Lighten up.
Hatteras
The people on Hatteras Island are not thieves. I used to live there and they are the most wonderful, nicest people. There were thousands of bags of doritos on their beach. As far as I'm concerned, better for them to come take the doritos home than to have the bags just sitting there, littering the beach. If I was there I would have picked up a few bags myself! Come on. Frito Lay can get over a little lost profit. And another thing. Why don't you go to Hatteras and check it out. It's not all fancy, expensive beach houses; it's small neighborhoods with average houses. And we were hit with a hurricane a few years ago and you know what? The community came together and helped one another - there was no breaking into houses and stealing others' property. Get over yourself.
Let's clean up the beach
Will all I see is bag's all over our beach, let just clean it up be for we lose the beach to the birds. then we will have a lot of trouble to get rid of. All these birds which could be very hard to do? & it could cause sickness to.
It's not theft, it's salvage
In fact it is not the same thing as breaking into a semi and stealing the contents. Salvage is a well established legal precident that originates in antiquity.
I'm glad there are people out there cleaning up the beaches.
Atomic Doritos Anyone...
Just food for thought (no pun intended)... what's to say that
some terrorist organization didn't dump this container. Maybe they were sealed nice and tight to preserve the poison that could have been placed inside the bags.
Free Doritos... maybe, maybe not
It's theft
Is this charter boat captain stupid? Better be lucky it was only chips and not a bomb. What he did was called burglary. He broke into something that wasn't his and stole the contents. This is no different than if the trailer had come off a semi on the interstate and was sitting on the side of the road. The thing was locked...l-o-c-k-e-d...and he broke it open.Prosecute him. To all those local scavengers....remember this moment when a hurricane slams your area...and in the midst of the aftermath, someone breaks into your property and steals the contents along with all your other belongings scattered about. You just remember that you were once doing the same thing. What they should do is figure out how many bags are missing...figure the cost...and raise their taxes for reimbursement. All those fancy expensive houses...yet too cheap to buy your own doritos. Sad....
Question of the week
With all that is going on this has got to be the dork question of the week.
they could not be resold
usually when truck wrecks while carrying food products, they either destroy the item or give it away (or donate) due to liability concerns, so i would think the same line of reasoning on a container falling off a ship would be right, but i would clean the bags before eating
No Problem
As long as the bags are still sealed there's nothing wrong with them.
Get over it.
You people need to listen to yourselves. Everyone is so worried about health hazard and law violations. The bags are sealed for god sakes. You have more of a health hazard in your own kitchen! People need to stop being so uptight in our country. I wish I would of been there I would have filled my whole SUV up with them just to clean up the beach! LOL Get a life people!
Yewwwwww!
Did any of them taste moldy or mildewy? If so, you might be calling "new york" pretty soon !
Hey now!!
The container didn't open by itself, some charter boat captains opened it! Sure, they were thinking, well, it's here, so we can just take what isn't ours by breaking into the container and call it a day. Uh, guys, don't you realize those are "Nacho Doritos" - they belong to someone else!!
Locals Point of View
Obviously people who are that concerned with health issues of sealed food are too uptight to live on Hatteras Island. If you lived here and had to pay to high cost of living you would know that a few (sealed) bags of free Doritos aren't hurting a thing!
I wouldn't.... because I don't like Doritos... Now Fritos.
I think the title says it all.
I would eat Fritos that washed up, providing they were still vacuum sealed.
And as long as the bags were still vacuum sealed, I wouldn't have any hesitation letting my kids eat them.
On the other hand, these chips belong to someone. Which means that I'd have to be sure the owner didn't intend to get them back.
what the heck
i cannot believe that those people would eat doritos that washed up on shore. that is a serious health hazard and probably a violation of a law. they werent your doritos...
Right...
30% of you would eat doritos that washed up? That's a health hazard and probably violates some kind of law.