Day 7, May 20, 1980

Forces from 911 Rescue began to arrive, despite many roads being blocked by collapsed buildings and bridges due to the blast in the eruption. It was time for me to returnto Singapore, to make a report on how the Fuji of America, without any warnings, erupted so vigorously and had caused such a large scale of unimaginable damages.

As the operations in the nearby airports were affected by the ash blew out from Mount St Helens, I had to travel further away on land before taking a plane from Portland International Airport. Finally, I went home, with my mission accomplished.

I witnessed the eruption of the sleeping beauty, and understood how fragile a human is while he stands before the nature. Though it was a very meaningful and precious experience, I think I would never do this again. Once is enough. This time I was lucky, having escaped from the deadly mudflows. No one could be sure that I would be so fortunate again the next time.

This is how the volcano St Helens looks like after the eruption

Day 6, May 19, 1980

The vigorous eruption of Mount St Helens persisted for less than 20 minutes. When we finally struggled out of the monitoring center, day was like night, ash flowed everywhere in the sky, and we had to put on our masks to prevent respiratory diseases. Fortunately, we escaped from the fatal mudflows mixed by the melted ice water and pyroclastic material – it had rushed down the other side of the mountain, reached Baker camp and continued flowing down.

We were treated at a temporary medical centre set up by staff at the monitoring center. In fact, nobody looked like a medic or doctor, as everyone had had different extent of injuries with himself, bruises, bleeding or fractures.


A car belonging to photographer Reid Blackburn, who died in the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens. The site is approximately 17 kilometres from Mount St. Helens.

Later in the day, news came. Without any signs before the eruption and has been dormant for 120 years, it was hard for everyone to accept that the volcano suddenly erupted so vigorously on the beautiful Sunday morning, even with precautions and warning given out 2 months before the eruption, no one had really worried about.



As we heard from the staff, the blast killed 57 people and damaged lives in an area of some 180 sq km, and a vast area was covered with ash and debris. The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, causing the mountain’s elevation to decrease from 2,950 m to 2,550 m. 250 homes, 47 bridges, 24 km of railways and 300 km of highway were destroyed. Thousands of animals faced death in the eruption, while hundreds of square miles reduced to wasteland. Approximately 2.74 billion US dollars was lost in the disaster.



A survivor paused during the ash cleanup on May 19, 1980, one day after the huge eruption



Enormous quantities of blow-down debris and sediment clogged the Toutle and Cowlitz rivers immediately following the eruption of Mount St. Helens


In the aftermath of the eruption, pyroclastic mudflows destroyed property along the Toutle River, depositing mud to a depth of several feet

Day 5, May 18, 1980

St Helens in the peaceful early morning of May 18, 1980

Sunday, May 18. First sun finds the mountain still drowsing. I have decided not to watch it today, a decision that soon will seem like the quintessence of ‘wisdom’.

7:00 am. I had my breakfast in the warm sunlight, enjoying the casual talk with my fellow climbers. Nobody, after days of waiting but no sign of eruption, anticipated that the volcano was going to fly into rages.

8:27 am. The alarm at the Coldwater Ridge Visitors' Centre went off all of a sudden. We were, quite naturally, thinking if it was a false alarm again like the one yesterday. However, things that follow proved to us that we were wrong, far too wrong...

8:30 am Ash and steam started to be ejected off the crater of Moutn St Helens.



“Hey guys, the warriors seem to start hurling again.”
While making fun of the legend of Mount St Helens, the voice was interrupted by a great shock underneath our feet.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake did it. Like ten megatons of TNT were dropped onto the top of the mountain, the entire mountainside falls as the gases explode out with a roar, heard from as far as 200 miles away. The incredible blast rolls north, northwest, and northeast at aircraft speeds. In one continuous thunderous sweep, it scythes down giants of the forest, clear-cutting 200 square miles in all. Within three miles of the summit, the trees simply vanish—transported through the air to unknown distances.



Then comes the ash—fiery, hot, blanketing, suffocating—and a hail of boulders and ice. The multichrome, three-dimensional world of trees, hills, and sky becomes a monotone of powdery gray ash, heating downed logs and automobile tires till they smolder and blaze, blotting out horizons and perceptions of depth. Roiling in the wake, the abrasive, searing dust in mere minutes clouds over the same 200 square miles and beyond, falling on the earth by inches and then by feet.



The failed north wall of the mountain has become a massive sled of earth, crashing irresistibly downslope until it banks up against the steep far wall of the North Toutle Valley. This is the moment of burial for Harry Truman and his lodge, as well as for some twenty summer homes at a site called the Village, a mile down the valley.


The eruption's main force now nozzles upward, and the light-eating pillar of ash quickly carries to 30,000 feet, to 40,000, to 50,000, to 60,000... The top curls over and anvils out and flares and streams broadly eastward on the winds.



The shining Sunday morning turns forebodingly gray and to blackness in which a hand cannot be seen in front of an eye.



In the eerie gray and black, relieved only by jabs of lightning, filled with thunder and abrading winds, a thousand desperate acts of search and salvation are under way.

As soon as I can, I get the airborne for a better look, and recoil from accepting what I see.
The whole top of the mountain is gone.

Lofty, near-symmetrical Mount St. Helens is no more. Where it had towered, there now squats an ugly, flat-topped, truncated abomination. From its center rises a broad unremitting explosion of ash, turning blue-gray in the overspreading shadow of its ever widening cloud. In the far deepening gloom, orange lightning flashes like the flicking of serpents' tongues. From the foot of the awesome mountain there spreads a ground-veiling pall.




A summary on the eruption of St Helens, 1980

Watch the video of eruption: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRnVhbfIKQ

Day 4, May 17, 1980

A night on the mountain, or rather, about-to-erupt volcano finally passed. We watched the sunrise on the mountain. The beautiful and awesome sun rising was the same as the days before – there were no signs to show Mount St. Helens was to erupt at all.

The weather was fine - cloudless sunny day. The mountain drowses on. Besides the swelling-five-feet-a-day bulge on the northern face of Mount St Helens, there were no signs at all about any geological activities around the area.

However, right after our lunch, an emergency evacuation warning about active geological activity in the area was sent by the Coldwater Ridge Monitoring Centre. While we were planning to travel some hundred meters higher towards the crater, we were forced to trek back to the visitor centre. We can see that there is a very high chance of volcanic eruption, as by the time we reached there, jeeps had already been standing by at the visit center to evacuate us back to Seattle if an eruption occurs.



monitoring data from Coldwater

Day 3, May 16, 1980

I have decided to start climbing with the group of climbers I met in the store while collecting my climbing permit, so that we will have a look-out for each other during the climb. We camped at a relatively flat ground on the flank of the mountain, at an altitude of approximately 40 meters above sea level. As there was no direct sign of imminent eruption, we decided to take the risk to spend the night here - typical consequence of a group of young people being brave enough to do something crazy. Despite the intrepid decision to stay overnight on the mountain, we still had some precautions. We all took turns to take the watch at night for two hours each.

During the long night, we shared about all kinds of things we knew about Mount St Helens. The most interesting thing I learnt was a legend of the indigenous Indian about the volcanoes: Once upon time, a beautiful maiden caused a battle between two rival warriors. They hurled fiery rocks at each other and so angered the Great Spirit that he turned the three into Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, and Mount Adams.

Day 2, May 15, 1980

After getting up early in the morning, I went up to Coldwater Ridge Visitor Centre, set up by the United States Geological Survey(USGS). I also collected the permit I purchased online a few days ago from Jack's Restaurant and Store. There, I prepared for the climb next day with some other people to make a close-up look at the volcano. A brief glimpse early in the day shows hardly a steam plume; then the clouds drop a curtain. I sit there, watching overtures of alternating cloud and sun, raindrops and rainbows. The curtain over the mountain never lifts.

I am starting to wonder what will happen if the already-active sleeping beauty started to erupt during my climb. Although there is a certain risk and danger of this trip, I will risk my life for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a close-up look at the volcano.


Diagram - How the volcano was formed

Later throughout the day, there was no direct sign of eruption, except for some small earthquake-induced avalanche of rocks and ashes. At the end of the day, a total of 174 shocks of magnitude 2.6 or greater were recorded, according to the statistics from the visitor centre.

Day 1, May 14, 1980

My plane landed in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) at about 1700 hours after a full day spent on the plane travelling from the other end of the planet. My mission here was clear, to take a close look myself at Mt St Helens, which had been reported to be active for months.

Map of Washington, Mt. St. Helens is in the center

Along the way towards the visitor centre just opened by the state of Washington, my mind was having a recap on what had happened on Mt St Helens. Two months ago, March 20th, a 4.1 magnitude earthquake struck underneath Mt St Helens which signal the reawaked of the volcano. Scientists flocked to the area, hoping to get a better understanding on the plate movement between Juan de Fuca and North American plates. Well they had made a right choice coming here as Mt St Helens became active again after sleeping peacefully for 120 years. No longer than five days later, ash was released from the crater that was blown open by a small explosion.

Explosion equals to danger, and when there is danger there is evacuation. The local people are immediately evacuated, accompanied by opened visitor centre to serve as a good observatory point. Similar explosion continued until April, but these are only small scale ones. Though some of the pressures are slowly released by these small scale explosions, but it is not difficult to notice that a large amount of stress is still building in progress.

Now May 14th, looking at Mt St Helens at a distance, the shape of the mountain looks just same as Fuji Mountain in Japan, with upper part covered with thin snow. No wonder it shares the same name ‘The Fuji of America’, even though it is only 2550 meters elevated.