The Indians of the Pacific Northwest had the right name for the mountain all along.
Hundreds of years ago, long before an English explorer penned the name of a British diplomat
to the peak, the Indians called Mount St. Helens the Smoking Mountain.
From the forested river valleys, the mountain rose past the jewel of Spirit Lake and soared
on to a snowy peak almost 9,700 feet high.
For those who came each year to climb, to wander, to camp, to dream, St. Helens was
a painting come to life.
Some called it the Fujiyama of America for its symmetry and rocky grace.
Then, on a morning in May, it all blew away.
With a force 500 times that of the atom bomb which leveled Hiroshima, the mountain blew
its top.
Clouds of searing ash and debris swept down its slopes, toppling trees like matchsticks,
boiling creeks dry, trapping, killing dozens of people and hundreds of animals in its firestorm.
The mountain unleashed torrents of mud and debris.
It drowned river valleys and dashed the homes, the dreams of those who had lived in its shadow.
It changed the face of Western Washington forever.
From this to this.
For years, geologists had watched the mountain.
They had labeled St. Helens an especially dangerous volcano, one that had been more
active, more explosive than any other on the mainland U.S.
Yet its fury came as a surprise.
The mountain is young by the measure we take of ancient Earth.
This volcano and its ancestors on whose ashes it rose date back only 37,000 years.
Most of what was the mountain before its spasm of destruction in May was only 2,500 years
old.
Its violent temper is the heart of many Indian legends.
They say the great spirit once gave the land north of the Columbia River to one brave.
The land to the south was the domain of another warrior.
The two fell in love with the same beautiful maiden.
She could not decide what she preferred.
The brave battled for her love, hurling fire and hot rocks at each other across the Columbia.
That angered the great spirit, who in a rage turned one brave into Washington's Mount Adams,
the other into Oregon's Mount Hood, and the lovely maiden into Mount St. Helens.
That is the stuff of legend.
So too is the life of mountain innkeeper Harry Truman.
He spent half a century at his lodge on Spirit Lake in the shadow of Mount St. Helens, a
mountain he loved and protected.
It's an emblem of me that Bamsin's been there 50 some years.
What if you took it down?
Well I'm not going to take it down.
Nobody's going to take it down.
It'll take me down and I wouldn't come over down that road, ass backwards when I go down
that road or I'm not leaving.
And I'm not going to take my name off of that damn sign that's sandblasted.
I've changed it five times in my life and it's going to sit there lit rots down.
And my God, I'd like to see the man that's going to take that sign off that post.
It is Thursday, March 20th, 1980.
The last people to witness the volcano's power had seen her erupt in 1857.
Since then, the mountain has been quiet.
Now an earthquake rumbles deep inside St. Helens.
She is awakening after a 123 year slumber.
Police and scientists scramble.
You're going to have to go and the faster the better.
One time, one saying, you gotta go.
How long did the tremor last?
It lasted about two minutes and it occurred about three minutes ago.
For seven days, quakes jolt the mountain.
By the end of that week, the ground around the peak trembles constantly as swarms of
quakes rock St. Helens.
March 27th, 1230 p.m., an explosion from the summit as steam blasts a crater in the glacial
ice.
Throughout the night, more explosions enlarge the crater.
Rocks and steam rocket into the air.
By mid-morning the next day, a second crater appears.
Sounds of steam ploughing through mountain.
Two huge cracks creep across the summit snowfield.
The blasts continue, and the two craters become one, almost a half mile long and 500 feet
deep.
There is ash now mixed with the steam.
By Thursday, April 3rd, two weeks after the first earthquake, a new kind of tremor rolls
through the mountain.
The scientists call it a harmonic tremor.
For the first time, it signals molten rock is on the move, deep within the mountain.
For three weeks, the volcano spits ash and steam.
There are thousands of small earthquakes.
There is no major eruption.
There are no fireworks.
But the watchers come from across the country and around the world, hoping they will be
the ones to see the fury, if it comes.
I just want to see volcano at work.
Overworked and undermanned, the police try to keep sightseers out of the area.
They try to, to keep residents away from an uncertain danger.
I have about $7,000 in snowmobiles at my cabin and at my building site.
Under my own responsibility, I go up and get them.
Hey, we wouldn't be in there ten minutes.
That's all the longer it takes us to go in there is about ten minutes and get the hell
out of there.
At this point, the volcano is still a novelty, a curious smoking reminder of our primitive
past.
There is no hint of a deadly future.
He's staying, huh?
Harry's going to stay.
It's his choice.
There's no goddamn way here.
That mountain has got enough stuff to come my way.
I've got a hill and trees there between me and that.
No way in the world to do it.
Wednesday, April 30th, the north slope of the mountain begins to bulge, to tilt ever
so slightly.
Scientists worry.
Geologists say molten rock may be forcing its way up inside the mountain.
They watch and wait.
Then, the mountain quiets down in May.
Many of the spectators pack up and leave.
So do some of the scientists, thinking the volcano may belch and spit off and on for
months or years.
On Saturday, May 17th,
Sheriff's deputies allow 50 people into the area around Spirit Lake to check their homes and property and pack out belongings.
This house been here a hundred years.
I collect things.
This house is just full.
My daughter's helping me.
My daughter's one town a fit because all this junk I got.
She doesn't want it.
She wants to live in here.
That I guess.
How long have you lived?
Eleven years.
This was my grandfather's house and I'm renting.
I was waiting to buy it.
That evening, the little caravan leaves the mountain.
But crusty old Harry Truman remains scoffing at those who go.
No, I'm not going to leave.
You're damn right I'm not going to leave.
I'm going to stay here.
If I left, tell me if I left this place and lost my home, I'd die in a week.
I couldn't live.
I couldn't, I couldn't extend it.
So I'm like that old captain and I got him going down the ship.
I said, if the damn thing takes this mountain, I'm going along with it.
I'd rather be dead for than to live without it.
Sunday morning, May 18th.
It is 832.
An explosion with the force of a 10 megaton atomic bomb rips off the north face of Mount St. Helens.
The top 1200 feet of the mountain disintegrate.
834 a.m.
A shockwave and hurricane force wind flattened trees up to 12 miles from the summit.
It is the leading edge of the path of death to come.
One minute later, lightning storms begin.
They spark blazes around the mountain.
A fiery avalanche of volcanic gas, debris and ash surges down the gaping hole in the north side of St. Helens, smothering everything in its path.
Spirit Lake Lodge, Harry Truman, even the lake itself are all gone.
Ash billows out of the crater, boiling nine, ten, eleven miles into the sky.
The wind blows the black cloud to the north and east.
In central and eastern Washington, day becomes night.
The ash, like a snowfall, blankets the earth.
It will continue to fall for 15 hours.
Cutting off towns, crippling traffic, stranding thousands, burying farm fields.
Television news cameraman Dave Crockett has a hunch.
A premonition something is going to happen on the mountain.
Sunday morning, he watches his premonition come true as he films at the foot of the exploding peak.
Suddenly, he is trapped in hell.
The wind howls through the forest around him.
A road disintegrates in front of his car.
There is no way out.
As the ash cloud comes after him, Crockett turns on his camera and talks into the microphone, knowing these words will be his last.
Dear God, wherever finds this, I don't know, I can't see this, I'm sure it's too dark.
I've left the car behind.
First to the gate, we got one magazine.
And as you can tell probably from this picture, I'm walking towards the only lot I can see on top of a ridge.
I can hear the mountain behind me rumbling.
There's an enormous mud and water so I came down and washed out the road.
I never really thought I'd believe this or say this, but at this moment, I honest to God believe I'm dead.
There's really no way to describe those feelings.
I feel the ash now in my eyes, it's getting very hard to breathe, burnt to breathe.
Because I'm not even able to talk, it burns to breathe, it burns my eyes.
Oh dear God, my God this is hell.
I just can't describe it, it's pitch black, just pitch black.
This is hell on earth I'm walking through.
Oh God, one step at a time if I can just keep walking.
God, there's more air to breathe.
Well, it's been about 10 minutes.
It's now totally pitch black, I can't see to keep on walking.
I guess I'm just going to have to sit down here and wait it out.
God, I pray to God that's all I'm doing is sitting here waiting it out.
God.
Oh dear God, it's very, very hard to breathe in this.
I can't see a thing.
If only I could keep walking, you know, only if I could do something.
Only I could do something, you know, so I'm just sitting here.
Yeah, I got the wrong attitude here.
That's to be something to tell my grandchildren about.
Oh man.
Ten hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter rescues Dave Crockett from his personal hell.
He will live to tell his grandchildren about Sunday morning, May 18, 1980.
Eleven fifteen a.m.
Snow and ice melted in the inferno that scorched the mountain, rushed down its slopes, gathering
trees, rocks and power along the way.
These mammoth mud flows sweep down both forks of the Toutle River, killing sightseers, ripping
apart a dozen bridges, demolishing homes, cars and logging rigs.
I think that's the question.
One thirty Sunday afternoon, the mud flows reach interstate five, more than thirty miles
from St. Helens.
They threaten to slice through the bridges there and cut the major north-south route
between Seattle and Portland.
The bridges hold.
The muddy torrent churns toward the Columbia.
It chokes the mighty river with silt and strands two dozen ships.
Monday, May 19th.
Most of the mountain's fury is spent.
The face of Mount St. Helens has changed forever.
A horseshoe-shaped crater where the summit once stood.
One hundred fifty square miles of forest and valley are gone.
In the prioritize, A lion from confinement,
Among the
Carefree
Spirit Lake is a log-choked, sulfurous wasteland of hot mud.
Music
The search for the dead and missing begins.
The people in the path of the ash begin to dig out.
The cloud of gray grit moves slowly eastward on the jet stream currents, ten miles above the Earth.
By week's end, it will reach the Atlantic Ocean, then circle the Earth.
May 21st, four days after the explosion, a shaken President Carter promises federal help and then tours the devastation.
I've never seen or heard of anything like this before. Somebody said it looked like a moonscape, but the moon looks like a golf course compared to what's up there.
It is a horrible looking sight.
Music
Thursday, June 5th. It's almost three weeks since the explosion.
A helicopter hovers over what once was Spirit Lake.
Inside is Jerry Whiting. She is Harry Truman's sister.
The chopper touches down lightly on the cracked, desolate moonscape.
There is no longer any hope that Harry Truman survived.
Jerry is saying goodbye. Goodbye to her brother, killed by the mountain that for half a century gave him life.
The mountain has taken so much in such a short time.
Lives, jobs, homes, a way of life.
A special place so many thought would always be with us.
All are gone, destroyed in that instant on Sunday morning.
Yet one end marks another beginning.
Already seedlings sprout through the ash.
Animals return, cautiously.
Man cleans up to build again.
The mountain starts to rebuild itself.
One moment in our passage through time is gone.
Another has begun.