20th
Anniversary Of Mt. St. Helens Eruption
Abridged
Story
From a news story by
CNN San Francisco Reporter Greg Lefevre
May 17, 2000
Twenty years ago there was
a massive sideways blast from Mount St. Helens. It vaporized forests
in five thousand degree heat. The blast flattened hundreds of miles
of timberland. It killed 57 people, many of whom vanished beneath tons
of ash.
"We first thought it
was a forest fire then we knew it was the mountain."
"You could see it burning and churning, kind of rumble. We were
right under it."
Scientists who watched it blow now say the eruption began with an earthquake.
This earthquake was enough to loosen the already unstable mountainside.
Peter Lipman of the US Geological Survey says, "And that released
the pressure that was holding the molten rock inside the volcano and
then a number of seconds after they observed the landslide, they saw
the first ash cloud come out and the big explosions begin."
Mt. St. Helens stunned scientists with its ferocity. Now it is the most
studied volcano in the world.
Peter Lipman says, "The events on May 18 involved an earthquake,
a landslide, a horizontally directed explosion, a vertically directed
explosion. And the resulting deposits are immensely complicated."
Now tourist helicopters fly over the volcano's edge. About three million
people per year visit the one hundred thousand acre national preserve.
Much of the land will look this way for centuries. But amid the dust,
life returns and sometimes flourishes.
Bob Andrew of the US Forest Service says, "It is beautiful. Wildflowers
all over. We have lots and lots of wild elk and deer. In fact we have
more deer than we had before."
The fury of Mt. St. Helens has turned scientists' attention to Oregon's
Mount Hood to the south and Washington's Mount Rainier. Both are geologic
cousins. And both are capable of the same thing.
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