Mount St Helens is living up to the original name it was given by Indians who inhabited the north-west United States — ”Smoking Mountain”.
”We’ve seen a lot of steam in the last couple of days,” Christine Cochrane-Bell of the US Forest Service in Washington state said this week.
Cochrane-Bell has a direct view into the crater of the volcano from her workplace at the Johnston Ridge Observatory at 1 327m above sea level and 9km away from the mountain.
She and others have been watching more closely as the volcano stirs. Since late last year, it’s been showing signs of life again, and a new 100m-high lava dome has formed over the seething magma within it.
The area is under alarm level two, which warns of ”slight discharge” of ash, gas or steam. But Cochrane-Bell said she feels ”quite safe”, even as close as she is to ”America’s Mount Fujiyama”, also the youngest and most active volcano in the Cascade Mountains.
Statistically, Mount St Helens isn’t due for another large eruption until 2080. According to the calculations of the US Geological Survey, the volcano has been erupting on average every 100 years over the past 4 000 years.
The 25th anniversary of the most recent ”big one” was this week on Wednesday. On May 18 1980, the eruption transformed the snow-covered jewel of the mountain range into a hazy hell. The summit of the mountain was sent into the sky, causing the mountain to shrink about 400m to 2 549m. Fifty-seven people lost their lives, and volcanic ash drifted over the globe for 15 days.
When the eruption occurred at 8.32am on a clear blue Sunday morning, Gene Palmer was 20km away enjoying a day out. The ash quickly covered his station wagon.
”It was a constant roar, and then you’d hear a boom-boom-boom-boom,” Palmer recalled in a story published in the newspaper The Olympian. ”Listening to that in the dark, I didn’t know if the mountain was about to come to us. I kept waiting for lava to flow.”
He sat for three hours while it rained ash. He had breathing difficulty, but otherwise, he came away unscathed. Others weren’t so lucky. Of the 57 fatalities, 20 bodies were never found. The bodies that were recovered belonged to people who had been buried alive in cars and recreational vehicles. Other victims were found in their tents, holding each other in a final embrace.
In the winter of 1980, thousands of small earthquakes signalled the volcano’s reawakening. Researchers expected an eruption, but no one guessed it would be as big as it was.
It was touched off when a magnitude-five earthquake caused the summit to collapse and sent a piece of the mountain’s side into the valley. That freed layers of hot glowing rock, which exploded after being exposed to the cold air.
A wave of hot gasses flowed over the mountain, and a cloud of ash rose 20km into the air. The eruption caused an avalanche of debris and mud that laid waste to more than 600 square kilometres of forest. Glaciers also melted within minutes, and countless numbers of animals perished.
In October, Mount St Helens began stirring again after more than 20 years of calm. Ash and steam rose 4km into the sky over the mountain, and small streams of magma forced their way on to the surface of the crater. That was all there was to the show, however, leaving thousands of spectators watching from the mountain’s flanks disappointed.
On nice summer days, as many as 5 000 people visit Johnston Ridge Observatory to view the crater. The exhausting five-hour hike to the edge of the chimney has been suspended since the mountain’s autumn rumblings. There were concerns that people could be hit by chunks of lava, Cochrane-Bell explained.
As an alternative, she recommends a hike in the former dead zone, where plants are growing again. Nature has been amazingly fast in healing the area, the forest expert said.
”We already have trees that are 25m tall, the first conifers, a lot of meadows and a large number of amphibians,” she said.
Shortly after the eruption 25 years ago, the area around the volcano was designated a natural monument and formally named the Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument. The intent is to let nature regenerate itself without the intrusion of humans. — Sapa-DPA