I was 7 when Mt. Saint Helens erupted
Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, at 08:32 Pacific Daylight Time. I was there, and my description of the experience begins below.
The May 18, 1980, event was the most deadly and economically destructive volcanic eruption in the history of the United States.[5] Fifty-seven people were killed and 200 houses, 27 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed. U.S. President Jimmy Carter surveyed the damage and said it looked more desolate than a moonscape.[26][27] A film crew was dropped by helicopter on St. Helens on May 23 to document the destruction. Their compasses, however, spun in circles and they quickly became lost.[28] A second eruption occurred the next day (see below), but the crew survived and were rescued two days after that. The eruption ejected more than 1 cubic mile (4 km³) of material.[29] A quarter of that volume was fresh lava in the form of ash, pumice and volcanic bombs while the rest was fragmented, older rock.[29] The removal of the north side of the mountain (13% of the cone’s volume) reduced St. Helens’ height by about 1,313 feet (400 m) and left a crater 1 to 2 miles (2 to 3 km) wide and 2,100 feet (640 m) deep with its north end open in a huge breach.[29]
More than 4 billion board feet (14.6 km³) of timber was damaged or destroyed, mainly by the lateral blast.[5] At least 25% of the destroyed timber was salvaged after September 1980. Downwind of the volcano, in areas of thick ash accumulation, many agricultural crops, such as wheat, apples, potatoes and alfalfa, were destroyed. As many as 1,500 elk and 5,000 deer were killed, and an estimated 12 million[5] Chinook and Coho salmon fingerlings died when their hatcheries were destroyed. Another estimated 40,000 young salmon were lost when they swam through turbine blades of hydroelectric generators when reservoir levels were lowered along the Lewis River to accommodate possible mudflows and flood waters.[5]
In all, Mount St. Helens released 24 megatons of thermal energy, 7 of which was a direct result of the blast. This is equivalent to 1,600 times the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.[30
That’s an adult’s perspective. How about mine? I was 7 years old in 1980. I went camping with my friend’s family, and we set up as close to Helens as we could. The Forest Service had closed the areas that were deemed too close to a potential eruption. Later, scientists asserted that the restricted zones should have been much more conservative. When the eruption began, it seemed like we were way too close.
I made these drawings and the written description shortly after the eruption.
I went to Mt. Saint Helens when it erupted. I was the first one to hear it. It sounded like a boom. It was darker than midnight. We could barely see the edge of the cliff.
The drive out of the Mt. Saint Helens national park was frightening. Within minutes of the thunderous rumbling, the ash plume enveloped the mountain completely. We stuffed the tent and everything else into the VW bus. As soon as we had squeezed ourselves in, we drove off. It was now darker than I’d ever seen, and pumice began falling from the sky. I remember a large piece cracking the windshield. The road out of there was treacherous under normal circumstances. Now we could barely see the see the taillights of the car that was only 10 or so feet ahead of us, nor the edge of the winding, single-lane logging road. To make matters worse, there was a steep drop off on the left side of the road. My friend’s grandpa tried his best to watch the edge out the side of the van, and hollered warnings and advice to my friend’s dad, who struggled to keep the van on the road. The going was excruciatingly slow. We made our way out of the national park with a line of hundreds of other volcano “watchers”. There were regular flashes of lightning and frequent earthquakes. Power transformers and lines caught fire and burned. Breathing was very difficult: My friend’s mom had us hold baby sis’ dampened cloth diapers to our mouths and noses. Through all of this, I was most afraid of lava. I knew that volcanoes always produced huge flows of hot liquid rock. To me and my imagination, the brake lights in front of us looked like flowing lava. I asked my friend’s mom if we were going to die. I’ll never forget her answer: “I don’t know.” She was terrified too. We all were. And we were lucky to make it out alive.
When we finally made it home, we were covered from head to toe in gray ash. According to my dad, we looked like ghosts. Luckily we had avoided that fate.
