History: 30th Mount Saint Helens Day

TORONTO, ONTARIO - A year ago on this blog, I predicted that today, on the thirtieth anniversary of the main eruption of Mount Saint Helens, there would be substantial coverage of the event. Not so, it seems, at least in the international media. Dig deep enough on the major news sites, and there will be retrospectives, but with plenty of news in the realm of politics, economics, and even a volcano in Iceland, there didn't seem to be much room to talk about something that happened thirty years ago.

That the world did not know how to handle the ongoing eruption at Eyjafjallajokul in Iceland should not have been surprising to anyone that lived through Mount Saint Helens. Major volcanic eruptions happen regularly somewhere in the world, yet each new one seems to lead to reactions as if nothing like it had ever happened before. In the case of Mount Saint Helens, it was mostly about what was in the ash. People were advised to wear masks and not disturb the falling ash downwind of Mount Saint Helens, as it might be toxic. It turned out not be. In the case of Eyjafjallajokul, it was about how close planes could fly to the ash plumes--something that airlines in some parts of the world already knew well.

A lot of things about Mount Saint Helens turned out to be different than they appeared. Farmers in eastern Washington state were concerned that the ash from the volcano that had fallen on them would ruin their crops. In reality, the ash turned out to be great fertilizer, and the areas with the deepest ash--near Ritzville and Lind, Washington--turned out to have banner crops in succeeding years.

One of my most lasting memories of Mount Saint Helens came not on the day of the eruption, but a few years later. The main state highway that had led to Mount Saint Helens and Spirit Lake along the Toutle River, highway 504, was nearly completely obliterated by the mudflow following the eruption. While that road was being rebuilt, forest service roads were re-established south from US highway 12 through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest to the area of devastation. My parents took me on a trip over these roads to see the barren areas, the trees looking like toothpicks leaning in unison, and what was left of the mountain. Even in the mid-1980's, just a few years after the eruption, there were already some signs of life growing up through the near-moonscape.

Perhaps that's the real lesson of Mount Saint Helens--humans need to be prepared for the unexpected from nature, as the deaths of 57 people on 18-May-1980 remind us, but many things are not as bad as first feared, and life always comes back.

History: Mount Saint Helens Day

BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON - So far, I've managed to get through the day without hearing a mention of Mount Saint Helens in the media. Normally, 18-May, the date in 1980 when the largest eruption of the mountain in the modern era occurred, killing 57, receives a lot of attention at least in the states of Washington and Oregon. I have personally used it as context for a math competition nine years later and a double-header of steam locomotives twenty-seven years later.

The direct impact of the nine-hour eruption on my personal life was relatively minimal. I remember being able to see the ash cloud rising even from a high spot near I-90 in the Enatai neighborhood of Bellevue, but on that day none of the ash headed our direction, and I did not know anyone in the path of the debris flow containing an estimated three million cubic meters of material that ran principally down the Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers to the Columbia.

It was a different story for my grandparents and my aunt Meri's family, who were fishing at Williams Lake near Cheney in eastern Washington state at the time. They received substantial ash fall from the eruption rivaling the peak 25+ cm fall near Lind, Washington in a surreal experience in which it was completely dark during daylight hours. They listened to (amongst other sources) Mike Fitzsimmons' famous 56 hours of eruption coverage on KXLY 920 AM out of Spokane, Washington. The day after the ash fall, they were told not to disrupt the ash, as it was not known what it contained, but my grandfather was among those that did not heed the advice and cleaned off the roof of their trailer and walkways anyway. A jar of this gray ash is one of my most cherished possessions.

Roads back to their Tri-Cities home were closed for several days, but eventually they were able to take the old highway via Washtucna, rather than the traditional route via US 395 which headed right through the peak ash fall area. Ash was still very much blowing in this area, and the position of air filters in vehicles proved very important. Those with air filters close to the ground tended to get clogged filters very quickly, while those in a higher or more protected position tended to have fewer problems. Air filters for cars and nose masks for people were very popular items during the entire series of eruptive activity in eastern Washington, where the ash was normally blown.

Next year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Mount Saint Helens eruption. Rest assured that everyone will be remembering it then.