eruption look like an atomic bomb repeating Mount St. Helens has erupted
this special report came to you from ABC News in New York stay tuned for further
details we return you to our regularly scheduled program no Mount St. Helens
hasn't erupted again but that's the way the world learned of the eruption of
Mount St. Helens some ten years ago today you know we in the Yakima Valley
had an inkling of the importance and the magnitude of that great event but it
wasn't until some three days later that the world would learn of the awesome
power of nature through these incredible photographs I'm facing Mount St. Helens
some three miles away behind me is bare meadow that's the place where those
incredible pictures were taken ten years ago a group of Seattle campers decided
to come up to this area to record history and indeed they did William
Dilley was a member of that party and he told me that he was lucky he made it
down alive and I decided to sit down on the log drink some coffee Gary set up
his camera and through the binoculars I've seen half the mountain cave in and
start start coming toward us real fast and at that point I decided we better
move and get out of this area because mean as you could see half of it was
gone and I mean it wasn't gonna stop it disoriented me and to where I did look
away once maybe just because I really didn't want to see what was really
happening and I figured as long as everybody was kind of idle I'm standing
around I'm not really standing around I mean we're scared to death I might as
well try to let other campers in the area know what was happening because
there was no sound it was more of a visual experience and when I saw that
much land moving at one time I knew we were in for some trouble the eruption
that rocked the northwest Mount St. Helens ten years after will take you
back a decade to a moment in Northwest history none of us will ever forget
Apple Valley broadcasting presents Mount St. Helens ten years after it's
impossible to imagine yourself that close to an erupting volcano so huge so
forceful that it even blew away the sound for William the scene before him
was too immense too intense to watch the shifting horizon so disorienting that he
had to look away to keep his balance from those astounding pictures you and
I tend to concentrate on the explosion part of the eruption but William and
his fellow campers had a front-row seat to the largest movement of land in
recorded history it's simply something to which the rest of us will never be
able to relate or understand even the incredible statistics are difficult to
comprehend the upper 1300 feet of the mountain slid away in a massive landslide
that amounted to a volume of point six cubic miles or three point three billion
cubic yards of earth some slid into spirit Lake or sloshed the water out as
if in a bathroom sink and raised the lake floor 200 feet this cataclysmic
scene was measured in seconds and by the time the group's initial shock was
subsiding they had to deal with the next unexpected phenomena the deadly
pyroclastic cloud finally when we all got in the car and we started to go down
the road the ash cloud was skirted by our campsite and the cloud rising higher
and higher and where we could see the electricity in the cloud and there were
it was violet white blue and I couldn't understand what was inside of the cloud
either I mean we didn't know what was in it what it was was it was dust
creating electricity and these types rocks started tilting us on the car
dented the car up pretty bad and I was wondering which one which rock had my
name on it you know was it a one ton rock or William was one of the lucky ones
for his party had camped only 500 yards from the fickle path of the pyroclastic
cloud a virulent mass of heat gas and rock traveling in excess of 300 miles an
hour conspiring with the unstoppable tidal wave of earth and mud this
unbelievably powerful blast would ultimately level huge forest trees 24
miles away and take the lives of 56 others not so fortunate as William I
finally came close to realizing what those few survivors already know when we
landed in the middle of the blast zone just eight miles from the mountain and
looked into the crater of Mount St. Helens ten years after and I looked out
the south window and it was like watching a movie when they fast-forward
the movies the clouds were rolling in it was because we're really black and
rolling they were rolling
ten years and one day ago the North Toodle River flows through a verdant
green valley a highway ran along the river connecting the warehouse or base
camp with nearby towns now it looks like this covered in places by hundreds of
feet of rock and sediment from the mud flow that rolled off the mountain and
wouldn't come to a stop until it reached I5 it began with what they called the
pyroclastic flow which was the first thing out of the mountain and that was
just an accumulation of these large blocks of ice or icebergs out of the
mountain part of the guts of the mountain itself and the mixture of water
and soil and burnt rock and all those things and as that went down the valley
it mixed with the side streams that came in the water and became much more viscous
started out very slow moving only about two or three miles an hour by the time
it got to I5 it was probably traveling at 25 to 30 miles an hour and it was
more like just mud that in it was a little different up here
by the time it hit I5 it was probably 20 feet high on this end next to the
mountain it was actually 640 feet high so it dissipated and spread out through
the valley floor as it went down the Tudel River we've all seen the pictures
of the tremendous devastation of the forest lakes and rivers surrounding
Mount St. Helens with acres of trees lying in patterns like some thick
coarse hair but I was really not prepared for what I saw when I viewed it
firsthand the site is staggering unlike anything I've ever witnessed the
landscape is truly moonlight except for some great trees dumb this could be the
surface of some dead planet the ground is gray and coarse no living vegetation
is visible and unless you know what to look for you could miss the occasional
gopher hole or beetle here as near as eight miles away this land once covered
by trees and thick undergrowth is now covered by as much as two feet of this
sandy grit that once was inside the mountain and it's the same sterile
substance that acted like a nuclear sandblaster ripping up every living
thing in its path the ash that we're standing on is part of the mountain
itself the under part of the mountain that blew out with the wind okay now it
was really sort of a stone wind wasn't it yeah it was a very thick wind because
it was totally involved with this rock fragment that was actually burnt molten
rock out of the bottom of the mountain underneath what would normally be lava
came out with the wind the wind itself was about 300 miles an hour very
destructive it was mostly destructive because of the rock fragment that was
engaged in there with the wind the eruption didn't occur as scientists
expected instead of a gurgling slow-moving lava flow the pyroclastic
cloud blasted out of the mountain with temperatures nearing 1,100 degrees and
blew down or scorched 200 square miles of forest because of the extreme
temperatures nothing in this immediate area would survive David Johnson was a
USGS geologist worked for the USGS and he was positioned on Coldwater Ridge
itself which is just south of us back over here between us in the mountains he
was about six miles from the mountain at the time that the wind hit and his last
words were his last words were radio report to his main office in Vancouver
where he said Vancouver this is it that's about all he was able to report
before the wind from the mountain hit him in 1982 110,000 acres of this land
was designated a national volcanic monument not to be disturbed no
reforestation no logging the area has been left as it was following the
eruption a living experiment where everything from elk to microbiology can
be observed and studied it's a chance to see firsthand just what the power of
nature can do and to watch it restore itself without the influence of man for
the last 10 years Mount St. Helens and its surrounding area has been a mecca
for scientists for above all St. Helens is a study in contrast
many areas are coming back in the last decade 18.4 million seedlings have been
planted by warehouser in areas affected by the blast so far studies show that
some of these new trees are growing back a third faster than before elk herds
have returned and live off the vegetation in the river valley and we
stock rivers and streams are now abundant with fish life ironically ash
the major problem for our Valley was never much of a concern this close to
the volcano unfortunately for those of us that lived on the west side of the
mountain the wind was blowing to the east out of the west and so it carried
most of the ash due east of here towards Yakima towards Idaho we had very little
ash actually settled out in on the west side of the mountain at my house in
Kelso I had about a total of an eighth of an inch of ash while the world watched
the towering plume of ash that rose 13.6 miles into the atmosphere and would
eventually spread around the world Eastern Washingtonians don face masks
and pondered just what to do with their tomato plants we'll visit a typical
neighborhood when we come back to Mount St. Helens ten years after I was catching
in a baseball game in Portland and Mount St. Helens was about left center field
Mount Hood was in right center field and about halfway through the third in the
Empire cat me see on the back of my shoulder said look up there
mountain's blown up and as it rolled in I thought well we're gonna have a heck of
a storm or our two brooms sweeping this stuff off the road the Shrine Patrol
fellas got some and they bagged it in little bags and when they left town they
took it with them and sold it and believe me they made quite a little bit
of money for the hospital the eruption of Mount St. Helens is one of those
unique and rare events where everyone can recall exactly what they were doing
the moment it happened the mountain blew everything got dark and all of a sudden
it's raining some unknown substance and flashing lightning what do you do you
call the state patrol things became much much in disorder due to the fact we didn't
know answers to things phones are ringing people are coming in they are
not knowing what to do we're trying to get help from others as to guidance and
directions of what we should be doing we take and get many calls of course as we
discussed before not knowing answers we not knowing answers to the questions
which left people in limbo as to what to do other than we could tell them to keep
listening to their local radio stations as information came available it would
be broadcast to them from the different agencies that were becoming involved
very quickly and if you were traveling that day and thought you had problems
seeing well so did the state troopers who were just as much in the dark as
you it's incredible that there are no deaths attributed to the traffic
problems of those first few hours as we drove through this area on that Sunday
morning it was just almost pitch dark and it seemed like as from this point
until we got to highway 40 or excuse me highway 12 and 40 it even got darker
and you had to slow your speed down to where you were 30 35 miles an hour to be
able to stay on the road you couldn't tell where the corner was it was in the
afternoon and about 430 and there were two or three of us out there directing
traffic and talking to people and you know explaining what we knew and you
could hear the ash kind of like little tailpacks off of your hat it was just
kind of eerie and confusing even the people dispersing the information were
having problems I'm sure that we I'm sure that we put out some misinformation
it was certainly not intentional it was a more case of just trying to search out
and get as much information out as we could some of it obviously turned out to
be bad for example at first we were and the public health officials were very
concerned about how the ash would affect our water supply would it somehow make
it undrinkable well we had suggestions for people to fill up their bathtubs with
water this sort of thing it turned out that wasn't necessary the water supply
remained okay when three billion cubic yards of earth slid off the top of the
mountain another 520 million tons of ash shot into the atmosphere where
prevailing winds blew at East directly at the city of Yakima 10 years after a
local neighborhood dusted off the memories of the Mount St. Helens
eruption you know it weighs 75 pounds for a five gallon can that's what it
weighs 75 pounds that was wrong well I went out in the garden and here's all
these big cabbages and I can't believe they're not that size this year but all
of the outer leaves were just laid flat to the ground and just filled with all
this ash and it just looked like people are on another planet the National Guard
says they picked up 23 tons from that curve and there was as much or more in
this curve down here that's how many tons of that stuff was just in this
little loop but we all we shoveled everybody's roof off and we were looking
dump it in a communal pile there you know well you were worrying about
disposing of that pile of ash John van Bell was figuring out a way to clean the
county to begin with we found out it was too much for just the ordinary street
sweeper to pick up so we went in with water trucks tried to flush it the
material didn't move very well that time we took road grazers after we had wet
down the road put it in the windrow and then we took front end loaders and loaded
on trucks and haul it off and then we used the street sweepers come up behind
to clean the streets afterwards possibly three inches all over the area in in the
city of Yakima just outside of the city and went as far north as up to the
Cascade Mountains in our area and about as far south as around top of Nisa
Wapato we didn't do any cleanup around Sunnyside in that area the ash acted as
a bonding agent bringing neighborhoods together where neighbors helping
neighbors was a scenario that would play out all across the valley the
neighborhood band together and they made Jack McQuire a captain of the group and
so they went from house to house and cleaned each roof as they went down
otherwise I would never have got it done no way it was the cooperation it was a
cooperation in the whole neighborhood that did it
I was up on top of your house. I was up there too. I don't know who all was up there. I was up there and so was Gene.
It must have been about at least eight or ten of us that were you know that
we were out helping because it was so much easier that way it was something
that we could not accomplish alone but as a group of people it worked out and
it was good about it. And while neighbors were helping neighbors our neighboring
cities were lending a helping hand. Well really we had difficulty finding
street sweepers at a time so one night about 11 o'clock I received a call from
a gentleman in Chicago he wanted to know what we needed I told him street sweepers
but one o'clock he called me back and he said he found several of them and I asked him
where they were he said about 60 miles south of Washington DC took a long time
to get him over here but we didn't use those. There was a gentleman in California who
had bought several street sweepers he was going to sell them to South America
some of those countries and he came up here with those three sweepers and he
helped us out. For neighborhoods the ash was nothing more than the decade's
largest nuisance. Farmers and local orchardists however were worried about
the effect the ash would have on their crops. Well I think like any industry
would we weren't we didn't know exactly what was going to happen. We came out the
next morning after the after the fallout and to find three-quarters of an inch of
sand covering trees houses everything and no one knew what damage it would do
what if it was toxic if it wasn't toxic. Some worried about an agricultural
catastrophe for all we knew it could be poisonous to our livestock and crops but
as it turned out we were basically dealing with with beach sand and we
decided that the first thing that needed to be done was the trees were were
covered with sand that we needed to get them cleaned off so that photosynthesis
could take place and and the trees didn't get any more stress on them than
necessary so we went through with our airbrush sprayers just using air to blow
the sand out of the trees and let it settle to the ground and that worked
fairly well took a couple of passes through and and then the overhead
sprinklers after that to continue washing them down and we were able to
get them cleaned up pretty well. Whether you tried to blow it, shovel it, sweep it
or hose it the ash affected us all and it took the city and county about a
month to finish the job and when it was done residents and crews had moved
anywhere from 450 to 600 tons of ash. I saw these big storm clouds coming I went
great my game's gonna be canceled and the next thing I know it's starting to
rain ash it was bouncing all over my cars and obviously I just watched and
well my game was canceled. I was coming over my cabin up in Spokane all of a
sudden truck comes by me and all this stuff starts coming up and turned on
the radio and found out like a bunch of fools that the mountains in hell was finally
blown so we tried to make some oars and slates and by the time they got about
15 miles out of moats and slates the car wouldn't take the ash anymore so it finally
died on us so we got out and started putting it towards Moses Lake walked
about oh mile and a half or so and finally a pickup came by and gave us a
ride to the EPEC entrance into Moses Lake and National Guard stopped us there
and told us to go into the cafe across the street and walked over to the cafe
walked in the door and about 10-15 people came running at us and physically
removed us from the building and told us to get out of there I guess they must
have been scared of us because we've been out in the ash for over a couple of days.
You can see now St. Helens and to the east the Yakima Valley. St. Helens is
flanked by the more majestic Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. It's not as
large and it's half empty but ten years after its eruption Mount St. Helens is
still the center of attention. Just 25 miles away as the crow flies steam
vents from the new crater dome and sprinkles of fine layer of ash over
white paths. In the springtime as the snow begins to melt is when you notice
this the ash that has fallen throughout the winter the snow begins to turn
brown it's the windy days in the wintertime blows everything debris and
everything out of the trees and that sits throughout the winter and when the
snow melts that brown look in the snow starts coming out and that's most all of
it is from St. Helens. A subtle reminder of the mountain's potential a force so
powerful that it's capable of doing this.
Witnessing the devastation is something I'll never forget when you realize just
how much the eruption destroyed it's mind-boggling. A landslide so immense
that when it slid into Spirit Lake it created a wave 200 feet high. Rarely do
we get a chance to see this indescribable power of nature. 110,000
acres of landscape still ravaged ten years after the event. The National
Volcanic Monument reminds us that with all of our ingenuity and technology we
are insignificant and vulnerable to the whims of nature. Only a handful of people
would see the fury of the eruption and live to tell about it but each of us can
walk through this devastation it left behind and without viewing this
landscape firsthand you'll never put that unforgettable morning in May into
its proper perspective. These pictures can't give you a conception of what it's
really like. Sturdy trees for as far as you can see knocked over. What kind of
power can do this to forests that stood 15 miles away protected by ridges and
mountains? A green landscape turned gray. A wide river valley covered completely
by hundreds of feet of earth. An area so scorched it will take 200 years to
return it to its original state and we're all familiar with the ash that
sailed 13 miles into the sky and fell on us like dry rain. Not only are you
welcome here you're encouraged to come. A paved road takes you all the way to an
observation point right next to the mountain and you can hike right into the
crater. After 10 years the story isn't over yet. St. Helens is still simmering
today and scientists predict it could erupt again in the next 20 to 30 years.
May 18th 1980 a day Northwesterners will never forget. We hope you've enjoyed
Mount St. Helens 10 years after. For Apple Valley Broadcasting I'm Julia Clark.