Mount St. Helens: America’s Deadliest Eruption

this video is brought to you by surf shark safety and security online are super important and you can protect yourself online with surfshark get 83 off and three months for free through the link in the description below on may 18 1980 the united states witnessed the most destructive volcanic event in its history in washington state mounts and telons erupted with the force of a hydrogen bomb the eruption removed the top of the 1 300 foot mountain and sent volcanic debris shooting out at over 650 miles an hour within seconds superheated ash had engulfed ridges over six miles away ancient trees were torn apart like matchsticks while the entire spirit lake campsite was lost beneath hundreds of feet of material all told some 230 square miles of wilderness were annihilated that morning but the human cost was also horrific 57 people were killed making the eruption to date the deadliest to happen on u.s soil yet there was more to what happened at mounts and helens than a mere tragedy for the blast to be so deadly it required not just innumerable slip ups but also outright incompetence on the part of state officials incompetence that led to 57 people losing their lives today we're bringing you the untold story of mounts and helens and how a natural event became an american disaster it was 5 30 in the morning when the sun rose on a clear day in washington state oust on a remote mountain ridge known as coldwater 2 david johnson was just waking up from his first night in the wild a genially scruffy man in his early 30s johnson was a part of the u.s geological survey team that had been dispatched to the cascade range a couple of months before now as the bird started to screech in the forest below the geologist stumbled over the uneven ground to his collection of instruments it was still cool in this part of the world the sun not yet having crested the ridge as he shivered in the half-life johnston performed his checks on the volcano before him the giant unstable volcano that had caused such a media sensation that spring of 1980 known as mountain talons the volcano had remained dormant for over a century but now as johnston watched it was waking up a great bulge forming on its side that was growing anywhere between two and six feet every day little could johnson have known it on the morning of may the 18th but mounts and helens was now just hours away from coming back to life with a deafening raw and when it did he would be among the very first victims the story of mounts and talons technically starts in pre-history 40 000 years ago to be precise that's when the volcano's oldest ash deposits are dated to long before human civilization ever emerged but that's just the beginnings of the volcanoes the laying of the foundations the actual mountain itself didn't begin forming until much closer to our time around 180 bc by that time what is now washington state was already inhabited we don't know what the first native americans to see mounts and talons in action called it but we do know that the name eventually passed down to one tribe was luala claw or the smoking mountain naturally when the europeans arrived they completely ignored this and were like hey look another unnamed mountain that we get to name yay so it was during george vancouver's 1790 expedition that luala claus became mountain helens at that stage the volcano was in one of its dormant periods so no one actually realized how explosive it could be it was only when 1835 rolled around and it started spewing superheated gases that everyone realized it was no ordinary mountain that cycle of activity continued for over two decades until one big ass eruption in 1842 that could have been a disaster had more people been living there but things soon calmed down and in 1857 the volcano gave one last fiery earth fart before falling silent again but just because the mountain was quiet doesn't mean it was ignored volcanologists geologists and lots of other dudes with jobs ending in ologist knew the cascade mountain range was an active place as early as 1978 mount intelligence was identified as crazy active even for the cascades it was so active in fact that some were predicting it would erupt before the end of the 20th century it's curious today to wonder if anyone laughed these predictions off if anyone told that pack of biologists stop scaremongering it's obviously gonna be fine if they did then what happened next must have been cold comfort to those volcanic cassandras in a mere two years they were going to be proven right in the worst possible way [Music] on march 16 1980 mount sintellens announced the end of its slumber with a cascade of earthquakes and minor phreatic explosions over the next few days they stopped being quite so minor and became actively worrying there was the 4.2 earthquake on march 20th that caused avalanches the explosion on march the 27th that sent ash spewing 6000 feet into the sky but this was just the volcano clearing its throat like a performer trying to catch the audience's attention before their act far more worrying for experts was the changing face of the mountain itself among those experts was david johnston one of the first geologists onto the scene that spring johnston was uniquely placed to see what was happening at mounts and helens it's doubtful he liked what he saw on the north side of the mountain a great bulge was beginning to form as magma built up underneath the surface over a mile wide the bulge would grow 260 feet outwards over the next two months a speed almost incomprehensible in geology terms this change spooked the authorities enough that on april 3 a state of emergency was declared in washington almost a month later on may the 2nd governor dixie lee ray ordered the establishment of a 5 mile red exclusion zone around the mountain this wasn't nearly enough you know that bit in jaws where the heroes keep being all like you need to close the beach and the mayor is all like people have the right to be eaten and so on well that's what sort of happened in washington state over the spring of 1980. only instead of a single shark the monster was a giant stone bomb with the power to devastate the entire area the problem was the red zone was simply too small to function rather than circling the volcano completely it hugged the boundaries of private land particularly that belonging to logging companies in other words its limits were based not on science but on property rights across the early days of may scientists and law enforcement both argued for a wider red zone at the same time logging companies cabin owners and wannabe gawkers all piled on the pressure for the zone to be shrunk even further it was just a volcano they argued there'd be plenty of warning before it went up and up was exactly where it would go the idea that mouse and talons might not explode vertically but horizontally seems to have never occurred to anyone as the arguments raged the bulge kept growing it kept growing as evacuation orders were served to those living in the exclusion zone it kept growing as the press foolishly made heroes of those who chose to stay behind it kept growing as david johnston and the usgs monitored the situation sure something was about to happen finally on may 7th the mountain entered a frenzy the bulge was growing five feet daily steam explosions and earthquakes were getting out of control it was clear a serious eruption was coming although no one could say for sure when it would happen 24 hours before the catastrophe struck a report landed on governor ray's desk the result of a week's intense lobbying it included an urgent proposal to vastly expand the red zone to the west evacuating the supposedly safe area where most of the eruption's victims would ultimately die all the proposal needed was dixie lee rey's signature but she never gave it that saturday she avoided her office instead going to a parade by the time she finally saw the report it would already be too late 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who'd soon find themselves directly in the line of devastation was unleashed by mounts and talons down at spirit lake harry truman was also entering his final minutes since you probably remember if the 33rd president had died in a volcanic blast we're obviously talking about a different harry truman but for a few weeks that spring he'd be even more famous than his predecessor the octogenarian owner of a popular campground truman was one of only three people in the red zone that morning and the only one there illegally his refusal to evacuate from the camp had co-owned with his late wife for 40 years had turned him into a folk hero a little guy standing up to these pen pushers from the government it helped that his personality was as colorful as an explosion in a paint factory a former combat veteran and prohibition bootlegger truman still concocted his own hooch in a still labeled panther's pea he ate cowberry for breakfast when the mountain talon's earthquake started his only concession to safety was to start sleeping in the basement naturally the press loved him truman was portrayed as a romantic almost an outlaw type a portrayal that earned him three proposals of marriage from fans across the nation but truman was an outlier as far as mounts and helen's victims went most of those killed that sunday were ordinary normal people who thought they were out of danger the zeibold family for example were driving the back roads trying to get a view of the volcano that was all over the news their two kids were playing with a cassette recorder mock interviewing the parents about the trip one of the last recordings they made was asking if it was safe to be this close to the lava both parents laughingly said that it was fine clyde croft too assumed he was safe a vietnam veteran he was camping outside the red zone with his friend al handy they'd pitched besides green river and hadn't expected anything more from that weekend than a taste of the great outdoors there were others too others like 52 year old artist velveeta chewed who was spending the weekend painting the mountain or there was joel colton who stopped next to a roadblock that morning to take photos saw there was the parker family who were developing a golden silver mine or wally bowers who was working as a logger at weekends to pay for his wife's cancer treatment all of these lives and dozens more would be snuffed out in an instant when the mountain blew but only david johnston and jerry martin would see their deaths coming at 8 32 a.m on sunday the 18th of may 1980 the two men were looking directly at the volcano's north face as it began to spectacularly give way the last anyone heard of johnston was his distorted voice as he tried to radio the news back to the usgs base in vancouver washington vancouver he shouted vancouver this is it for those near the volcano the apocalypse had begun the trigger for the deadliest volcanic blast in u.s history was a 5.1 magnitude quake that struck one mile beneath mounts and talons the mountain was so unstable that the quake caused the bulge to collapse triggering the largest non-submarine landslide in recorded history but of course no one had time to think about that as the bulge roared down the mountainside the pressure that had been steadily building beneath it for two months was suddenly released as one magazine memorably put it it was like popping a champagne cork a cubic kilometer of boiling ash and debris shot out in barely a second over a cold water two david johnson had just enough time to grab his radio and shout a warning before the deadly cloud swept over the ridge burying him alive the blast moved at over 670 miles an hour rolled over ridges like a dust storm clinging to the ground coiling into valleys flattening forests and choking the life out of anything in its path two miles distant to cold water too jerry martin had a handful of seconds to realize what was happening just long enough to say his last words the camper and the guard just over to the south of me are covered he told his ham radio it's going to get me too and then nothing but silence as the plume of ash swept outside the red zone it completely filled in and buried spirit lake unlike with david johnson and jerry martin we have no idea what harry truman was doing as the 100-story cloud buried him maybe he was sleeping maybe he was enjoying his last seconds on earth with his beloved cats either way the ash was so hot when it hit him that it's unlikely he felt any pain heat shock kills in less than a second far too fast for your brain to comprehend the signals it's receiving as his niece later told reporters it's doubtful he'd have wanted to survive the destruction of his camping lodge anyway by now every tree in a six mile radius of the volcano had been destroyed spirit lake had been filled with debris and the landslide was thundering down the towto river valley burying everything in its path and still the destruction wasn't over as the ash radiated outward away from the volcano the danger of instant death from heat shock began to dissipate in its place came a far nastier fate on their lonely road the cyborg family's car was overtaken by the cloud all four of them choked to death their lungs filling with ash as thick as cement they weren't the only ones to meet this end clyde croft the vietnam veteran had been camping with a friend survived the initial blast diving into a river as the cloud overtook their sight he then wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and managed to walk eight miles nearly to safety before finally suffocating on the ash that had slowly filled his airways but even as the heat dissipated the eruption remained damaging there were mud flows floods smaller landslides that unleashed devastation making the area almost impossible to escape up to 17 miles from the eruption trees were torn up by their roots 45 miles distant the rivers got so hot that salmon leapt out onto the banks all told 230 square miles were annihilated roads were destroyed bridges swept away and parks buried beneath a blanket of ash up to seven thousand big game animals like bears and elk were killed alongside countless birds and small mammals hundreds of miles away people heard the sound of the blast as far distant as montana heavy ash began falling like snow when the sideways flow at last exhausted itself the mountain began to belch a vast ash cloud directly upwards 12 miles into the sky lightning flashed in its depths starting forest fires a couple of geologists had been surveying the bulge from a small plane and narrowly missed being killed snapped off pictures of the damage already it was clear the mountain had blown its entire top off 1 300 feet was missing from the summit as ash poured out into a sky below which lay 57 dead people there was just one uneasy fact on experts minds this was likely still only the beginning although the mounts and talons eruption would only cause four more indirect deaths two people killed in car crashes due to low visibility and two who suffered heart attacks it would still wreak havoc the vast ash cloud would eventually travel around the entire world but it was the pacific northwest that suffered the most as it moved the ashrun crops brought down power lines and caused widespread blackouts it clogged pumps poisoned water grounded airplanes and in some places reduced visibility to almost zero car engines clogged with it seized up people who breathed it in suffered respiratory problems leading to widespread closures of everything from schools to airports to roads on the less severe end of the scale the eruption also caused a run on pantyhose of all things which could be wrapped around air filters for protection from the ash as with the physical damage the economic damage was vast it's estimated that overall the eruption cost somewhere in the region of a billion dollars which is crazy money especially for 1980. finally after a whole day of continuous eruption the emissions from mounts and helens at last began to lessen around 5 30 pm by then rescue teams were scrambling to evacuate survivors trapped in the now ironically named safe area some pulled off miraculous escapes many others didn't although the eruption ceased by monday may 19 the volcano would be rocked by more blasts across the summer and all the way into fall yet none of the subsequent eruptions would have anywhere near the impact of the one on may 18th of the 57 people who died that day all but three of them had been outside the red zone established by governor dixie lee ray incredibly this death toll could have been much worse within the area inundated with ash were logging grounds owned by private companies had the volcano gone off on a weekday there would have been hundreds of men working there instead it was just lone guys like poor wally bowers logging at the weekend to raise money for his wife's cancer treatment yet despite the near-miss and despite the lack of fault on the part of the victims that wasn't the story the public heard the day after the tragedy governor ray went on tv and declared that every single one of the 57 victims had ignored her warnings and traveled inside the red zone in reality only harry truman could be considered in the zone illegally the other two in the red zone had received permission while the remaining 54 victims had all been where the state's own maps told them they'd be safe still this didn't stop a false narrative from quickly being constructed when president jimmy carter arrived to visit the disaster site he repeated the myth that the victims had ignored warnings in the end it would take a 1985 court case to establish that the dead had not been at fault by then though the devastated landscape around mounts and helens would already be on its way to recovery there's a dryly amusing anecdote about the extent of devastation caused by mounts and helens as president carter was being flown towards the disaster site he glanced out of the window and saw nothing but dead trees as far as the eye could see the story goes that he murdered to himself look at that incredible devastation the head of the forest service who was sitting next to him at the time awkwardly cleared his throat and said that this was just the result of private logging the volcano was still mild in front of them while that tale may only raise the ghost of a smile it's only because there's very little about mounts and talons aftermath that's worth smiling about the green and fertile landscape around the volcano was gone replaced by broken trees and endless swaths of grey almost everything living had been buried under piles of ash the result was a landscape that looked like the surface of the moon most of those who saw it judged it to be about as hospitable there were predictions that the affected area would never recover in a sense it never did the forests and lakes around mounts and towns never went back to how they were before there was just too much that had changed too many ways the landscape had altered to return to its pre-eruption state but that doesn't mean it was as dead as everyone thought it was before the summer had passed there were already signs of returning life some plants and small animals that were still beneath the winter ice survived the eruption and emerged to discover that they'd lost their natural predators so there was a population explosion of things like frogs which presumably regarded mounts and telons not as a disaster but rather as an awesome improvement the return of wildlife was helped by a sincere attempt to clear the landscape as best as possible millions of tons of ash were removed taken away and dumped in landfills dead timber was recovered by the forest service who planted 10 million new trees in the place of felled furs congress even got in on the act creating the national volcanic monument in 1982 to help study the after-effects of large-scale eruptions and wonderfully this all worked within only a couple of years life was definitely returning to the slopes of mounts and helens trees regrew plants came back animal populations balanced today the area has more biological diversity than anywhere else in washington state and yet the story's not over although the 1980 eruption blew its top clean off mount satellin's isn't dead it's not even dormant in the first decade of the 21st century the volcano repeatedly expelled magma creating brand new lava domes in 2016 clusters of earthquakes were again registered far below its surface signaling that the volcano was active fast forward to the here and now a mountain helens remains the most active volcano in the entire cascade range according to the usgs the volcano is one of the cascades most likely to erupt again in our lifetimes although they stress it probably won't be anywhere near as devastating as last time it's clear then that the story of mounts and helens itself is still far from its final page nor is the volcano the only thing that's still alive although it has since been overshadowed by natural disasters like hurricane katrina mounts and helens still looms large in the public's imagination the damage it caused and the 57 lives it claimed remain the benchmark for volcano tragedies in the united states while his victims may be gone so long as there are people who are interested in this grandest of american disasters then their stories will continue to live on so i hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching

Channel: Geographics

Views: 352,207

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Id: OdZOrj4ITpw

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2020