(then-Governor Dixy Lee Ray had signed an order establishing a "red zone" around the volcano on 30 APR 1980 that turned out to be, in fact, grossly undersized - something like 50 of the 55 to 60 people who died in the eruption on 18 MAY were outside the original "red zone" - see below).
Saturday, 17 MAY, something like 50 vehicles drove into the area that had been closed to bag up their stuff. The eruption took place at 8:32am, before the second planned caravan enetred the blast zone at ten, and since it was a Sunday the active logging tracts were empty.
Still, somewhere in the vicinity of 55 people were killed.
That ain't Pompeii...but, then, we knew more than they did back in the First Century, and knew how damn deadly dangerous these stratovolcanoes were. The volcanoligists of what eventually became Cascades Volcanoes Observatory warned the State of Washington that this monster could do all sorts of unpredictably deadly things. And the state government listened...until people grew bored and restless and demanded to "reopen" the woodlands around an actively erupting volcano. We learned a hard lesson about the power of convergent margin tectonics and nature in general.
As a geologist I find it kind of interesting to reflect on that, just at the moment.
Why?
Just a thought.
The wife of a close friend living in Spokane developed silicosis from the ash cloud of Mount St Helens. Related lung complications later killed her. She, and he, were never clamoring to open that red zone. So just like today it ended up killing more than those who wanted it opened up.
ReplyDeleteLike one of the commenters on your linked tweet mentioned: "Gee, you think we might have learned a lesson from that".
Waitt makes the point in his memoir that the USGS was practically screaming about the hazards and were largely greeted with blank stares and disbelief. As the map shows, the "red zone" was WAY too small, and we knew that Mt. Mazama - the current Crater Lake - had dumped FEET of ash all the way across the northwest.
DeleteBut those were "working forests"; Cavenham and Georgia Pacific and Weyerhaeuser needed the timber, the hikers and campers needed the exercise, the Spirit Lake resorts needed the tourists. So the pressure came on the state government to open the area around the mountain...and the state caved.
And the mountain exploded, and made just as big a mess as the geologists warned.
The CVO has done dozens of studies, made hazard maps, warned of the volcanic dangers to places like Electron in Washington and Rhododendron in Oregon. The effect has been...almost nothing. Every so often - like, perhaps this coming Monday - people remember 1980 and recall that we in the Northwest live in the constant threat of volcanic and seismic hazards.
And then we go back to sleep.
What, the CVO hasn't been starved of budget yet by President Valtrex? I thought his new USGS Director was only putting bucks into petro-geology.
DeleteCVO has been winding down for some time now, and so I suspect that the budget has been reduced more since the money can be used for renting rooms at Mar-a-lago or something more useful to the grift. But Trumpy Bear wasn't the first to cut the CVO budget, and the longer we go without another major eruption the more likely that the slow erosion will continue...
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