#1980 eruption

[adesantis]

The Story Behind The Photo: Mount St. Helens, May 18, 1980.

This iconic image captured by Richard Lasher shows his abandoned Ford Pinto and dirt bike on a road heading toward the volcano just as it erupted. Recognizing the extreme danger, Lasher abandoned his car, unloaded the motorcycle, and managed to escape at full speed, surviving the disaster.

[wiirocku]

Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption as viewed from the air.  This active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

[tarmaque]

I recently uncovered a packet of photos in some of my Dad’s stuff.  These date from sometime in March 1980, and were taken by my Grandfather.  They show Mount Saint Helens in Washington State during the unstable period just prior to the May 18 eruption.  I’m not certain where they were taken but I believe they were taken from the north side somewhere, possibly from a ridge above Spirit Lake.  

It was taken with a Kodak Pocket Instamatic with 110 film, which I remember he had at the time.  The photos are not of good quality and I doubt the 110 format would produce much better even if I did have the negatives.  However this .gif does give you an idea of what was going on.  If he were there a few weeks later he would probably have died.

My Grandfather hunted and fished in the area for many years, and prior to the war worked up there for the CCC building fire roads.  When I was a boy I lived with my parents in Castle Rock Washington not far away and often drove up to the mountain.  My Father even knew Harry R. Truman, the famous old geezer who refused to leave his lodge on Spirit Lake and was killed in the May 18 1980 eruption.  We also have family friends who lost their home on the Toutle River from the pyroclastic flows.

[litrant]

Ka-BOOOOMMMM!

Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens by Steve Olson (W. W. Norton, $27.95).

Mount St. Helens’ last eruption, in 2010, was a relatively minor one, but that volcano is not finished yet. In fact, the entire West Coast has some volcanoes and seismic faults that aren’t dead--they’re just napping (for more details, read Kathryn Schulz’s 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece for the New Yorker, “The Really Big One”).

Steve Olson’s new book, Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens, is concerned with the top-blowing monster eruption on May 18, 1980, that killed 57 people. He provides a very clear overview of the volcanic history of the mountain, but he also weaves into his narrative the story of Weyerhauser, the gargantuan lumber company that is the world’s largest private owner of timber land, and the personal stories of a handful of the people who died that day. 

No, he doesn’t leave out Harry Truman, but he doesn’t focus on the old man of Spirit Lake, either; this is a very well done general history of a geologic event that had profound economic, social and climate implications, and it also manages to be a good story.

On a side note, though: Can we please stop titling books “the untold story”? It had damn well better be an untold story if it’s worth the time to read it.