Mount St. Helens: America’s Deadliest Eruption
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Source/Further reading:
History overview: www.history.com/topics/natura...
List and bio details on all 57 victims: eruptionbook.com/victims/
More details on some victims: blogs.scientificamerican.com/...
Mistakes that led to deaths, and details on some of those deaths: www.latimes.com/archives/la-x...
More on the mistakes: historynewsnetwork.org/articl...
How the death toll could’ve been much worse: www.nationalgeographic.com/ne...
Incredible photos of the blast, during and after: www.theatlantic.com/photo/201...
The weird tale of Harry R. Truman: www.sciencehistory.org/distil...
www.spokesman.com/stories/202...
www.cbsnews.com/news/one-man-...
Map of victims: www.columbian.com/news/2010/m...
Future eruptions: www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/mount-...
Description updated - Get Surfshark VPN at Surfshark.deals/geographics and enter promo code GEOGRAPHICS for 83% off and 3 extra months for free!
Simon can we get a Geographics on Western Sahara?
The only thing that keeps me from skipping the ad reads is knowing that Simon actually uses anything he endorses.
Well, that, and Simon's seamless transitions and segues.
This took me back to geography class back in the late 80s where this eruption was discussed and almost after was about an English village again the 80s that disappeared into the sea and another UK village that got swept away by landslide if I recall correctly...
@@worri3db3ar nothing good came out of the 1980's. I'm proof!🤣
@@SkunkApe407 lol well at least we got to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall and an end to the cold War with the former ussr.
There was also Robert Landsburg. He captured photos of the eruption, then as he saw he was going die, wound up his tape, threw it in his backpack, and laid on top of it to preserve the photos for scientists to discover. He, Martin, and Johnston are incredible for still doing what they set out to do knowing they were moments from death
Didn't they purposely go there knowing they would die? I thought they did it specifically to get footage and data that wouldn't be collected normally.
@@NotWorthTheAirIBreathe they did not know they were going to die. They knew it was a possibility, like storm chasers following tornados, but I dont think the USGS or US government would have been okay with letting them be there if everyone knew the men would die. To them, it was small odds because they assumed the blast would go upwards and had no idea how violent the eruption would be
That`s a badass move..
There's a small monument to where they found his body out there, I think. Very subdued thing but sobering.
That man deserves a medal for his dedication to science. Well, they all do.
“It’s just a volcano. 🙄”
“It’s literally a bomb the size of a mountain, Jerry!”
"Vancouver, Vancouver! This is it!" The last words of David A. Johnston, rest in peace dude.
I think the saddest part is the kids asking about the lava. They all died. This is why geography and earth science education is so important; it can literally save your life, just like that one 9 year old during those Christmas Tsunamis a few years back recognized the signs of a tsunami and warned her parents and others (because she had just been taught that before the holidays).
I agree with this comment but “A few years back”??
It was 2004, the Boxing Day Earthquake and Tsunami, so that was now 16 years ago.
A bit longer than “a few years back”
@@dancingcarapace Please show me the standard definition for a few years back.
@@TheGryfonclaw usually when someone says “a few years back” they mean 3-7 years ago. Not friggin 16
@@dancingcarapace Usually? Okay, great, that's a good working definition. For you.
@@TheGryfonclaw usally when I have a pissing match it's over something better. See what happens when we don't just look at data... u ovb knew what he ment an you sir a ovb a tatch on the older side if 16 years is a few years back.
Your both right move along now work together an get me
Wait, so YOU'RE telling me that the incompetence of a politician cost American lives and the media lied about it to cover it up? I don't believe that for a second...(sarcasm)
The media didn't lie about it, on the contrary they were the ones encouraging people to ignore the warnings and come look. Media greed and political incompetence is more appropriate. (Also as simon said, the geologists only suggested an extension to the red zone practically before the eruption and the suggestion didn't reach the governor in time as she was away from office at the time, although this doesn't excuse her for originally setting the zone to small in the first place)
Well. Regardless of semantics, mountain go boom, people died, dang, if you don't like it, ask Elon musk for a one way ticket off. Donate it to science
Yeah, sounds like a movie plot. That would never happen in real life...
Yes, a Democrat politician. I think they got what they deserved that day putting a Democrat like Lee Ray in power. Remember, elections have consequences.
@@LordVulcan93 True that.
"It's just a volcano" would be one of the absolutely least soothing arguments to me.
some dude in Pompeii: "hey should we move? these earthquakes are getting ridiculous that volcano is is ready to pop!"
some other dude: "nah its just a volcano"
legit
depends. Lots of volcanoes out there are dead, never going to erupt again because the lava plumes are no longer there.
Think the Eiffel mountains in Germany. Beautiful, fertile, area but no risk of erupting.
its just an ACTIVE volcano might bring a lil more soothing ..TERROR
Not only that, but it is a small volcano too. With said eruption being in the mid VEI range.
General rule for life, never put yourself in situations where the question "is it safe to be this close to lava" has to be asked
Truth.
Exactly!!! People who don't take personal responsibility because "the government/media/etc said it will be okay" FFS. The kid was smarter than their parents. It's sad that they died because of their parent's stupidity.
If you have to ask , “is it safe”- that’s a clue to get out of there .
There wasn't lava. It was pyroclastic mud flow that killed many people. Some people were forth or fifty miles away down river and we're still killed due to mud flow.
@@morticiaheisenberg9679 Take personal responsibility? They were killed by a vulcano. The only reason you know it wasn't safe is because you know how the story ends. How were they supposed to know? How were they supposed to know that the goverrnor was lying, and not listening to the eperts?
You're blaming them for this, rather than the governor whose lies got them killed, because they didn't automatically assume the government was lying? What a callous load of crap. Have some respect.
After hearing about the eruption my mom who was a young adult at the time went outside to see the ash. Funny thing is western washington got almost no ash while eastern washington got absolutely caked, she told me the only pieces of visible ash she found where on the pedals of flowers. My grandparents for several years after that drove by the site to watch it recover. They where shocked at how fast it did.
This will probably be buried but hey it's an interesting family story.
Interesting that the west part of the state didn't get much ash but the eastern part did, when it was the west side of the mountain that blew. But I suppose it was the prevailing winds at the time, from west to east, which determined where the ash went. I was 9 at the time, but I still remember seeing a graphic in the newspaper about the ash and where it would fall, and we down in Kansas were on the edge of the fallout zone. The talk of volcanic ash was in all the news for weeks. Of course, as Simon said the ash eventually flew all around the world, as volcanic ash usually does.
You shut your damned mouth draco. I read your story.
The ash cloud covering the easy isn't weird...that's just normal weather patterns. It would have been odd if it was the opposite.
My mom was a teenager living in Tacoma at the time. The blast was loud enough to wake her up. Meanwhile, my dad and his family, living in Federal Way (only a few miles north of Tacoma), didn't hear a thing, even though it was heard even further north in British Columbia.
I’m from Eastern Washington, my mom had only been in the country for less than a year, and said it was like watching a dark ass cloud coming over the area, and that it was as dark as midnight for the next three days, and took a long time to clean up all the ash and damage
Washington State resident here. We've basically all made peace with the fact that we're either going to experience an apocalypse by titanic earthquake, an apocalypse by one of the five volcanoes surrounding us on all sides OR if we're lucky: Both.
The view is pretty, though.
That's how we here in Western Oregon feel about it as well. We haven't had a major eruption in the near past. But there's always Crater lake to remind us of the other sleeping giant that blew it's top off. So between the crater lake, any number of only napping volcanoes and the cascadia subduction fault line, any of them could wake up at any time.
@@redchic I've heard that a variety of Native American folktales from different tribes in our area all basically tell that all the volcanoes AND the subduction zone erupted simultaneously. Cheery.
@@ProffesionalZombie12 .. .. dang! the natives history is usually pretty accurate. I can't even imagine how apocalyptic that must have seemed. And strangely enough, it would make sense given that the all sit on the same fault line and all connected by shared lava tubes. All I can say is....i love the PNW and don't ever intend to move, so I hope I'm dead before it happens again!
@@ProffesionalZombie12 .... Thanks for the history. As scary as it must have been, history is a good tool to learn from.
@@redchic No problem! And I'm planning on being in the SAFEST PLACE possible!
"people have the right to be eaten" that made me chuckle.
Me too.... Been telling my boyfriend this for years😂
I don't think he's ever seen Jaws... there is a lot of movies he's never seen
My parents were in Washington state during the eruption mum was pregnant with my sister
@@ianashby6294 ok Ashby
we do, and thats something americans have forgotten recently
I feel sorry for the guy who was a logger who died because he was working to pay off his wife’s cancer treatment. I also feel sorry for the others that passed and their loved ones.
The camping owner and his cats got me too, very sad end
Yes.People dying is sad.Thanks for weighing in!
I was chocked when i heard that. Damn it!
@@ink3539 isn't the guy who refused to leave?
@@darthvenator2487 yeah, I thought how scared he was, and his poor cats too !
Born & raised Oregonian here. Growing up, the story of the eruption plagued us with this sort of eerie fascination. On clear days, you can see the topless mountain on the horizon. I remember being a kid, on my way to Fencing class, when the mountain had another (smaller) eruption. It’s a terrifyingly magnificent thing to behold.
No matter how big and bad us humans think we are, Nature will ALWAYS be the true ruler of this world.
Question: Could Oregon refer to yourselves as organic?
That I can completely understand. I used to visit Oregon, California and the Cascadia Range a lot when I was younger. It can be deceptively eerie to know how a place that can be so beautiful and peaceful one moment, can become so destructive with little warning. Then again there many area's surrounding St. Helens that do serve as a reminder of what happened, the ruined Caldera, the remains of spirit lake, the petrified forest... one can only hope you stay safe.
As a fellow oregonian I understand completley
I remember thinking it was snowing outside our house and got angry at my mom for not letting me go out and play in it. I was only 5 at the time. My parents still have a jar of the ash on a shelf in their house.
My family still has all the ash collected from all of the different eruptions from Mt. St. Helens.
I was only three and don’t remember it, but my brother was 5 as well. We were visiting family in Portland and my brother says sneaking out to play in the snow and the horrible shock of putting volcanic ash in his mouth is one of his earliest memories.
Me too! Except I was 6 and lived in Portland. We still have a big jar full of MSH ash.
My Auntie and Uncle live near Portland and Vancouver. The first time I went to visit them, my uncle took me to the bottom of their garden to show me a huge chunk of ash that's permanently embedded in the floor.
@@BIGSHANE456 I remember driving through Yakima right afterwards wishing our ashfall was like theirs. Yakima had less and it was heavier so not as dusty. The Columbia Basin around Moses Lake had it the worst of all.
Props to you for saying the name of some of the victims. Statistics can be very dehumanizing.
Names don't mean shit to me. Just letters on a screen.
@@ember-evergarden that’s fantastic, you are cool.
@@ember-evergardenthese are peoples lives. they aren’t just letters.
Since the 1980, the crater of Mt. St. Helens has one of the fastest growing glaciers in the world. It’s also considered one of the most dangerous glaciers in the entire world. If the volcano decided to erupt, then the soil temperature under that glacier could rapidly rise hundreds of degrees in a matter of hours. That could melt the entire glacier very rapidly, and send a deadly lahar down the mountain. A lahar is a type of mudflow that’s a very nasty mixture of mud and water produced by a volcanic eruption. Lahars can be extremely dangerous and deadly! The mud in a lahar pretty much has a consistency like concrete. If a person gets caught in a lahar, then it’s pretty much guaranteed that they won’t survive the ordeal.
Well that's comforting
For further information on how devastating a lahar can be, please see documentaries and articles concerning the Nevado del Ruiz eruption and Amero Tragedy, or the accounts of the lahars following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
A few pretty interesting things you missed in this video, people who owned homes in the red zone faught for their right to be on their properties. They ultimately had to signs forms saying if they go and something happens it's on them. Also a survival story that's pretty amazing. The eruption melted the ice cap which created a massive flash flood. There was a couple who were fishing that got swept away, yet somehow survived after floating miles down stream on logs. The woman seriously injured her arm, wrist and leg. Truely incredible that they survived.
I remember the log story. Her arm was badly damaged being pinched between basically two tree-trunks but it also held her face just ever so slightly above the water some of the time so she could breathe. I didn't know the husband survived too. That's good to know.
The blast taught the world a lot about volcano's, especially lateral blasts!
How about: The world learned a lot from the blast
I was born only a few months before this eruption. I never truly realized the effect that this eruption had on the world and the people around it until watching this video. Thanks Simon for a good video that also tells the story of a few that were lost in the devastation that ensued. These stories deserve to be told.
is like my belly after eating a quarter pounder burger in macdonalds
She has blown up more than Rainier or the other mountains that are caused by the Cascadia Subduction Zone that is just 62 (apx) miles off our coast from Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino, CA. You can check this out by contacting the U.S. Geological Survey in Vancouver, WA.
"the world"
never thought I'd hear a volcano called a firey earth fart. way to go Simon
It sounds so classy when an Englishman says it
I loved the animation.
Every time I look out my window It will be all I can think of. Forever.
@@purplemoonshoes me too. a moment of levity in an otherwise very sad story.
That's a scientific term, if I recall.
I live near Mt. Merapi in Central Java, Indonesia and there's a saying whenever the mountain erupts. "Merapi never break its promise," a promise that no matter how devastating the eruption might be, life will be restored again.
That is beautiful! 😢
I'm only 13, so I obviously wasn't alive when this happened, but I live in the foothills of the mountain. My dad was just 7 months old when this happened. Thankfully, my grandma was able to collect some ash, and she still has it. This is why I want to get into geology. It's terrifying and breathtaking all at the same time
please don't just go around telling your age online, especially if youre that young, lots of dangerous creepy people on the internet
@@fairykeibani9155 You’re blasting your own childhood on the internet by posting gacha videos for “daddy”, which is equally if not more unsafe. Public videos like yours are essentially a breeding ground for the creeps you’re talking about
Was there 4 years ago, amazing location. Spoke to a guide, he survived because on that day was sick, none of his co workers survived
Video of it dident happen.
Did he say whether they were aware that it was bulging? You'd think that in itself would be a huge warning especially if you lived there and knew it wasn't normal.
@@JaneAxon123 they were monitoring it, did expected an eruption, but not what came
I visited a couple of years ago. Can see where run off has carved new gullies through the ash, but it's still quite other worldly to look at. Trees that have literally been blown off near the ground level.
When you look at the mountain today standing at the Johnston Observatory, you realise how big a mistake being there was. It's maybe four to five miles from the mountain and it almost couldn't be more in the path of the eruption.
Nobody:
Simon and only Simon: pack of ologists
you got an ology, your a scientist!
Might have to be 30+ and from the UK for that one
“Big ass eruption” lol
"One last fiery earth fart..." Not gonna lie, if that had come seconds earlier it would have been a legit spit-take all over my keyboard. Whew.
I do have one tiny nitpick: Someone *did* predict a lateral blast! David Johnston suspected she was gonna go lateral, based on an eruption he'd studied previously. And the man still went out and sat on a ridge directly in front of the blast he knew was coming at some point. Scientists are absolutely wild.
Agree. They did suspect.
17:44- That guy is my hero. Being saved from an ash cloud, but smoking a cigarette on the gurney.
What could go worse with his lungs, eh? :)
I noticed that too....gotta love 1980!
Was he smoking a cigarette or was he just trying to tell us how big of a cunnilingus fan he is?
@@Mbbrog analingus is the ultimate example of recycling lost calories
I was ten years old and camping near Mt. St. Helens when I saw earth turn to sky. I'll never forget the lightning in the ash cloud and the fear on the face of the adults. I was too young to even realize I should be afraid.
The best fictional movie about a volcano I have seen so far is still Dante's Peak. Very realistic overall, very good effects. Let's not talk about the grandma+lake scene.
That was brutal in every sense.
yep, great movie.....we are lomg over due for a badass st helens film with truman and the rest of em
It's accurate but has one failing. A stratovolcano does not produce the red lava and the explosive pyroclastic flows and Ash.
They wouldn't have had to deal with the lava driving back down the mountain.
@@timothybogle1461 I mean they overdid it in the movie, sure, but... While they do not reach as far as those from shield volcanoes because they have a higher viscosity, stratovolcanoes can produce lava flows. Mt. Etna is a stratovolcano and does produce lava flows. So does Stromboli.
Í was seven when it came out and I watched it and Volcano at the same time. I still get the two movies confused but my advice. Neither is for 7 year olds. Neither is Tornado! or The Jackal. A lot of weird shit came out around the same time and I watched all of them
Thanks to the observations at Mt St Helens, we know to be really scared if a volcanic flank bulges, and that landslides in stratovolcanoes can be the "popping of the cork". We've learned so much thanks to it, and to the dedicated photographers, geologists, and volcanologists, some of whom died in the line of duty.
I suppose the lesson to learn here is : WHEN AN ENTIRE MOUNTAIN IS DEFORMING FROM VOLCANIC PRESSURE IT MIGHT BE TIME TO TAKE THINGS MORE SERIOUSLY
I’m procrastinating a mineralogy paper on Mount St. Helens that’s due in 2 days currently; thanks for the reminder Simon 😅
I remember visiting St Helens as a kid in the early to mid 90s. We weren't allowed to get close. A friend of mine said the red zone is a lot smaller these days. A lot of people think of volcanic ash as firewood ash, and it's not. It's more like tiny stones that you'd be breathing in that turns into wet cement when it enters your lungs. I still have the sample that I got back then. My aunt lives nearby in Vancouver (WA, not BC), and a sister lives near Seattle, so St Helens, Rainier, Hood, etc are all pretty, but I like to know when they're acting up
1:30 - Chapter 1 - Seeds of disaster
4:55 - Chapter 2 - Doomsday foreseen
8:20 - Mid roll ads
9:45 - Chapter 3 - In the line of fire
12:55 - Chapter 4 - Disaster
16:40 - Chapter 5 - Aftermath
19:20 - Chapter 6 - From the ashes
*Mt Rainer in the future*: 57 people? Hmph those are rookie numbers
The same with Mt. Hood and Portland.
Yellowstone been kinda quiet since this dropped 😳
Edwin Lindley imagine if they both popped at the same time
As worrying as those looming disasters are (Rainer in particular since it seems one of its flanks is failing and thus likely to go whenever the volcano next erupts making it a scaled up analog of Mt. Saint Helens). I also fear there is an even deadlier situation brewing beneath Naples Italy. The city of Naples Campei Flegrei has all of those beat largely because they built an entire major city (Naples) inside its caldera. The ground has been continuously swelling for more than with scientists very worried as they think the cap of the caldera is nearing its breaking point.
Earlier this year earthquake swarms have gotten much more frequent and intense as the ground continues to swell as it has since the 1950's currently it is rising at around 0.7 cm /month. It is an alarming situation the Earthquake swarms appear to be due to rising magma the hydrothermal systems have already over the last decade rapidly peaked and stayed at high levels of activity.
It is an alarming trend of activity as while scientists think it will blow "soon" the timescale of soon isn't quantifiable making evacuation very difficult. I expect one day we or our near descendants will wave up to Naples having been blown off the map from below probably with untold casualties from the political tensions and interests
Yep, Seattle in its eyes.
My mom always tells me the story about how she had to wrap her air filter in TP in her Datsun and replace it every 5-6 miles because the ash was so bad.
You know you really could of went the extra mile here and made your profile photo Nissan instead of Ford. However its very understandable. I owned a 05 Nissan and the damn thing had a cassette player and no power windows. I had to save money to put a cd player in because Nissan didn't get the memo that they no longer produced cassette tapes at that time. I suppose it was a step up from 8 track tapes
It's amazing how such a thing in history can seem so mundane in retrospect.
My father was about 12 when St. Helen's blew up. He was riding on a dirt bike in his mother's and step father's property in Washington when it blew and he spotted it.
He rode back in the morning and woke his mom and step mom up, and they watched it for a while. On the opposite side of the mountain.
He tells it like a mundane childhood story.
Meanwhile growing up in Seattle, I think it is interesting to have a relative who personally witnessed it blow.
Not that it matters to anyone but me, but my grandfather proposed to my grandmother on the shores of Spirit lake, which was obliterated by the destruction. I remember her talking about being immensely sad at the devastation. I hope everyone has a good day, and best of luck out there!
Ohhhh that’s so beautiful story about your grandparents!
“It’s just a volcano” I’m hard pressed to think of a scenario where that would put me at ease.
No kidding it's like having a nuke in the back yard and saying "it's just a bomb".
@@wesrrowlands8309 it’s 50 kiltons of tnt, whats the issue?
I take it you've never been to the Hawaiian Islands then? Those volcanoes are constantly active, and pose very little threat to life. The composition of the magma is what makes the difference. The magma in Hawaii is thin, and almost watery, meaning that the eruptions are constant, but not that explosive. The magma in Mt. St. Helen's is thick and goopy, which traps gasses, and leads to cataclysmic eruptions.
You're missing the key word.
DORMANT
@@mandipowell7797 Mt. St. Helen's isn't dormant though...
I grew up in Southwest Washington state and camped many times at Mount Saint Helen's. We had family friends who lost their homes when the Toutle River flooded. The ash ruined vehicle engines, crops, trees and river ecosystems. It was a major disaster with over 50 victims.
Ironically, one of the ash falls saved the lives of multiple iron workers who were working on a job that was closed because of the ash fall. The job has been temporarily shut down to clean up the ash, and on that day, a crane collapsed on that wall, crushing everything under it's massive boom. At 18 years old, I remember hating getting the ash on myself, in everything and not being able to get clean.
One of my earliest memories is my mother solemnly telling me that the reason the sunset was so vivid was that Mt St Helens had erupted. I was as impressed as a four-year-old can be.
Mount Saint Helens is about to blow up and it’s gonna be a *fine, swell day*
Everything's gonna fall down to the ground and turn gray
All of my friends family and animals probably going to run away
But me I'm feeling curious so I think I just might stay
The Dow Jones just fell down to 0 it's going to be a fine swell day
And I wonder if its gonna be as good a day as yesterday~
All of these business suits that I’ve just purchased, gonna have to throw em all away
Thanks for covering this. Your take on it was more heartwrenching than any of the history classes about this. Thanks for talking about the people that died because of it. My mom was alive during this and has told me stories of being all the way across the state and still the town being covered in ash and it not being safe to go outside for days.
I live a couple hours away and have been to the volcano at least once, if not twice, every year since moving to Washington in 2006. Just the changes in the last 14 years are amazing to. In spring time, it's so green and lush with the new vegetation that it's a little hard to believe what happened in 1980...though there are still plenty of scars that remind you. But nature rebounds all the time. This is one of the spots in the US that everyone should try to see at least once, just like Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon or any of the famous national parks.
I was fascinated that the blast blew Spirit Lake up the hillside, filled it in with debris, and then it sloshed back down and is now at a higher elevation than before. And still full of logs, decades later. I was there in 2012 on a motorcycle trip... what an amazing area.
One fact I didn't hear in this video but amazed me as a kid who grew up in Eastern WA learning about the eruption in school in the 90s, was that Johnson put his camera equipment under him as the blast was coming to try to save the footage! Absolutely incredible!!
I don’t think that was Johnston, I think that was a photographer named Robert Landsburg, who also died in the explosion
Johnston and anything close to him was vaporized in seconds, definitely thinking of the other photographer who was mych further away that they actually found
One of my earliest memories. My brother was born that same day in Seattle. The sky went from partly sunny to black! The drive home to Eugene Oregon a few days later was surreal. We had ash snowing for days. My mother would not let me play outside for days.
I remember our science teacher hauling a TV into the room, and putting the news on with this. Scary.
I was 12 years old and still remember that day with great detail. Living in Fairfield Washington, A small town about 30 miles south of Spokane. Fast forward to late 90's. Family and I went to the Johnson Ridge viewpoint. On our way there it seemed like there was a line where life was and the devastation began. Like jumping from one place to the next. Pretty surreal. Been to both view points and recently drove around the southside of the mountain. it is still incredible.
I've been to Washington and Oregon in 2018. One of most beautiful regions I've ever been to but those volcanos like Mount Hood and Mount Rainier made me thinking what would happen if those mountains erupted since they are closer to cities than Mount St. Helens is.
I remember it when I was a child, people tried to drive away from the pyroclastic cloud and were overtaken by it.
In May 1980 on was on the first train allowed through the area. I remember being on a trestle going over a small Washington town. The world below me was completely gray. Six feet of silty mud covered everything. And the dust invaded every part of the interior of the train as we traveled. It was a haunted sight 'll never forget. Thanks Simon.
I was in grad school in Eugene, Ore. The sound wave created a huge boom that shook our windows.
I took my sons to visit their aunts in Oregon. Then we took off to see what Mt. St. Helens had done about a week before we got there. Houses on the sides of roads had been abandoned & were about 2/3 full of ash. Ash was everywhere. With Oregons pretty much constant misty weather, it made the ash hard packed & looked like cement. I wrote this before watching this video. The video verified what we saw.
My childhood was in Vancouver from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, and while I've forgotten most of them, I remember being awed by my teachers' stories of the aftermath, such as using snow shovels to clear ash as thick as winter's snow.
We were vacationing in Spokane that weekend. I was 15. At noon, that day, the sky outside of our hotel was as dark as midnight except for the ash falling like snow to the ground. Everything shut down. Driving on the ash was like driving on glass. People wore masks to protect their lungs, and the hotel employees put bedsheets over their cars. We weren't permitted to leave for days after the long weekend ended, and between Spokane and the Canadian border, we had to change the car's air filter three times.
I still have a pill bottle full of ash.
Who vacations in Spokane?! That’s like vacationing in Barstow
@@caseycasey621 I laughed my ass off at this. I believe we were there for a parade and festival that only happens on that long weekend? Anyway, you'll have to forgive us, as we are Canadians and clearly didn't know any better. I will say, however, that we really enjoyed the mountainous regions outside the City, and everyone treated us extremely well under very unusual circumstances.
“Mount St. Helens: America’s deadliest eruption”
Yellowstone super volcano: I can change that
No rush -- take your time.
Please, not until we invent force fields
it's already done that at least three times - and before that it was called the something else supervolcano and proved it several more times.
PS have you seen the "dramatised documentary" Supervolcano? The bonus material is fascinating - The Truth About Yellowstone. The two parts may be on YT.
You don't have to go that big for a deadlier eruption. If Mount Rainier goes lahars will flow directly into Seattle suburbs. 80,000 people live in the danger zone.
When Yellowstone "goes up" that's pretty much an eraser for most of the west coast and America. Sleep tight kiddies. Ain't science fun? ;p
Even though I wasn't alive, the lore behind it lives. As a native Washingtonian it's part of my heritage. An event my parent's remember fondly.
She is really a young mountain compared to other even larger peaks nearby so she's a very active place. She is part of the greater Cascade Range where remnants of far older mountains dating back several million years are scattered amongst the newer peaks. Good video.
Dang, didnt know that. Thought it’d be relatively the same age as the rest of the chain. Speaking of old mountains though, the Appalachian Mountains are really old as well, which makes me wonder if they had active volcanos in the past.
@@YOOT_JJ The Appalachians formed as a result of an ancient collision between Africa, America, and Eurasia. The 3 continents collided about 200 million years ago during the days of Pangaea and actually created mountains on all 3 continents (Appalachians, Scottish Highlands, and Little Atlas Mountains). These mountains were collectively called the "Central Pangaean Mountain Range", and at the time, would've rivaled the modern day Himalayas.
Of course, the type of mountain building involved is unlikely to produce volcanoes. After all, you've never heard of a Himalayan volcano, right? The area that is now Appalachia has likely not seen volcanic activity for the past 400-500 million years. Of course I'm not a geologist so I wouldn't know that for sure.
@@TheCoLDKanadian That’s actually pretty sick, thanks for the info. I live near the end of the chain, so i was naturally kinda curious about that. Crazy to think about how ancient this land we live on really is.
@@YOOT_JJ No problem! I find it interesting just how old North America actually is. I mean, the Canadian Shield has some of the oldest known rocks in the world at over *3.8 billion years old.* That's about as old as the continents themselves.
Suffice it to say, North America is old. Probably was one of the first continents to emerge from the sea. Hard to think it's survived this long relatively intact.
@@TheCoLDKanadian All of this really just makes me appreciate that we, humans, are even here. On a continent so ancient it has existed since just after this planet formed, on a planet so beautiful that it shines like a blue marble from afar, and in a universe we may be able to see and explore for ourselves one day.
Sorry to get so existential, but damn does that simple notion give me hope for us. Hope it does for you too, man.
Sending love all the way from Zimbabwe. Everyone reading i hope you will still be here in 2020.
My mom lived about four hours away from the mountain and she was heading to a rodeo with her friend when ash started falling, she ended up going to the friend’s house and she got separated from her family for about a week and she couldn’t contact them because the phone lines were down. I was obsessed with volcanoes as a child and found it so cool she lived through that and I made her take me there one summer and my uncle gave us a jar of the ash that my grandfather collected from putting cookie sheets
The strange part about the ash spread is that it happened so unevenly in Washington. The East side was mostly covered from one to several feet of it. Much of the West side had very little of it. I was 7 and our family lived in Renton, just south of Seattle, about a hundred miles north of the volcano, and we only had a light dusting.
Another strange part of that day was the explosion was heard as far as Montana. We, in Renton, heard nothing. In fact, we were completely unaware that anything unusual had gone on in the world until that evening when my dad tuned in to the 5:00 news. Seeing such devastation so close to us felt very unreal.
The only thing we were aware of was that the day had gone gloomy very early in what was predicted to be a warm and sunny day. We were not aware at the time that the gloom was ash. They looked like regular light-grey clouds for a typical overcast day and did not block out the sunlight and turn the day to night as it did on the East side. The days were gloomy, yet rainless, for many weeks.
I was born a year later in Portland, I remember as a child the ash on the ground still when I was camping with my family.
I lived 30 miles southwest of the mountain when it erupted. I will never forget it. You did a very good job with this video, Simon and crew. Very factual and accurate.
A superbly made and absolutely interesting documentary, as always.
I really liked you shed light on the many lives lost and gave the victims their names, not just numbers but people who lost their lives and will be forever missed.
Stood on the Lewis and Clark bridge and watched it spew ash. I was 9. Used to go sledding up there, still go camping up there.
Those people driving their kids near the volcano pissed me right off, lol.
Indeed. I don't know who to be most angry at for going there and thinking it safe. Those poor kids.
@@lisakaz35 to the parents knowledge, it was safe, according to state maps.
@@lisakaz35 yeah, I mean, I get wanting to see a volcano, but that’s what film is for!
@@whalesauce3647 Common sense tells me it's not a good idea, but I get that you wanna blame the State. I wonder how Simon knew the parents laughed and called it safe. History tells different stories. I suggest checking out how Pliny the Elder died trying to save people fleeing Pompeii. I don't think he was terribly close when it happened.
@@lisakaz35 The parents did something stupid out of ignorance that got them all killed, but the key is “out of ignorance”. They didn’t realise that the location they were driving in was unsafe because it was not declared such. Not everyone is familiar with how volcanoes work. (Maybe they had recently moved to the area from a place that doesn’t have volcanoes.) Even the scientists were caught off-guard. If no one tells you something is dangerous, it is hardly only your fault if you do it with disastrous consequences. The Governor should not have tried to cover up their mistake by blaming the victims. They blamed scientists for doing their jobs! They blamed people for not being out of an area that they had not evacuated. That is far worse than taking your kids on a dangerous joyride.
I was there i watched in real time. Put a prospective on life that still Aws me to this day. Every year on may 18 there will be a phone call from my brother... you remember... yupp.... remember that... yupp... that was awesome. Thanks Simon and Crew.
I was in grade 3 when this happened. A week later on Monday morning, there was a layer of ash on our desks and everything else in our classrooms and through the school. This was in southern Manitoba.
I spent a lot of time growing up visiting my Grandparents in Oregon City- there are still places where you can find ash from Mt St Helen this long after words.
"lots of other dudes with jobs ending in 'ologist'" what a covert blaze. allegedly.
Maybe Danny put it in the script?
Definitely see the blazing personality creeping into the other channels. Even the memes lol
That whole jaws bit screamed of Danny
@@TunaFreeDolphinMeat Dermatologist
The Earth fart tidbit made me giggle 😆
Live near this mountain and have Climbed this mountain multiple times. It's beautiful. Wild how much destruction it caused
This is explained in great detail in the book:
"A brief history of nearly everything".
I recommend this book, it highlights the dangers around Yellow stone NP, among other things.
“One last giant earth-fart”...is that the technical term? 😂😂😂
It is now! 🥴
I was living in Vancouver Wa. at the time. We watched the eruption just a few miles from our house. Days later there was 3 inches of ash everywhere, it looked like a not-quite-right snow had fallen.
I was in Vancouver, B.C.
Yeah, there's something unnerving about watching ash rain down. I haven't seen a volcano erupt, but in San Diego and we had the Cedar Fire in 2003 and the Witch Fire in 2007 and they both led to a smoky red orange sun and raining ash. It really does look like a "not-quite-right" snow. The very first time they showed the ending premonition for game of thrones (spoilers) I was like, "omg, it's ash. They want us to believe it's winter and snowing, but watch, it's raining ash and shit's on fire!" My husband didn't believe me.
I remember my grandfather telling stories of the ash and dark skies from a few states away after the eruption. Really interesting to hear stories of people who were there/had family who remember the event
SO watched everything on this channel and wanna say THANK YOU for this great content! Now im starting with the next channel of yours :D
I remember Mt St Helen's. Mushroom clouds came rolling in and it started dumping ash in Yakima and Tri-Cities on the east side of the mountains. Day turned into night. Now I live at the base of Mt Rainier. 😊
I live in Tacoma but work in Fife, also worked in Sumner good old Lahar sirens. Always thought Mt. Tahoma is the prettiest mountain ever.
Oh good! Now you can add a fear of Rainier's lahar to your list! I've heard that if Rainier blows, the resulting lahar will be catastrophic.
@@ryanholloway9645 I always thought so, too. It's breathtakingly beautiful up here. Peaceful. Mostly. LoL😊
@@MegaKat Lahars scare the crap outta me. I just hope there's enough warning if anything should happen. But, in the meantime, I love it up here.😊
@@aliciapittenger515 haha I'm sorry you're so scared of them! I've read and heard mixed things about yall's warning system, but I hope it's enough to get all yall out in time!
I prefer our Mount Paektu, I've climbed it many times
Hi Daddy
Hey is Dennis Rodman a nice guy in person?
In a Kazakhstan, we say to let a womans drive a car is like letting an apple into volcano, Great Success!
The summer of 1980 my family drove to Alaska in my dad’s VW Camper. It was a great trip. We stopped internet to see Mount St. Helens on July 22nd when it erupted again 3 times while we were watching. The last eruption was high enough in the atmosphere that it was still in daylight while it was full darkness where we were watching. I’ll never forget my mother running to the Camper yelling “Let’s get the Hell out of here.” when the first eruption started.
when going hiking and hunting, there is still a 1-3cm layer of Mt St Helens ash just below the layer of fallen leaves and pine needles over 150 miles away
I remember this day so well. I was living in Spokane, WA at the time. The ash turned a beautiful day into night. Ash covered everything in an eerie silence. No birds, no people outside, nothing. Just ash falling out of the afternoon sky.
That's almost exactly as my aunt described it. She lived in Uniontown.
Out of all the information that you said, my mind decided to focus on "fiery earth fart." Why? lol
Wonderfully done video!
The first person to tell me about this eruption was my father.
He was still living in Hertfordshire, England at the time and said he saw a cloud of ashes there, too.
It left me more amazed than anything else, to realize just how far the after effects of a natural disaster can travel.
Fascinating video. I love your channel - not just for the interesting content but also for the many great comments from people who have connections to the respective topic. It's like the best of the Internet, bringing everyone closer together.
I remember this. It’s where we all learned the term pyroclastic flow. We’d never seen anything like it here in my part of north Louisiana. We watched videos of it in science classes with the distraction of youth. It is only as an adult seeing those videos that I understand the true horror of the disaster.
Toutle (Tootle) river Simon, carry on.
I remember that day. I was walking out the door and it was snowing like crazy ..... it was warm out and winter had been done and over with already. It was ash that was falling but it looked like snow. The mountain had been grumbling for weeks, tremors from a waking giant. I lived near the Columbia river on the southern side of St. Helens , the opposite side of the eruption. What a site that was, I'll never forget that day.
Mount St Helens is my absolutely favorite volcano. I always loved doing research on it and watching documentaries of the volcano growing up.
Sometimes I do regret not becoming a volcanologist like I had initially planned on doing when I was a kid.
What's amazing about the eruption of MSH is that it was so one-sided that there were forests on the south side of the volcano that were barely touched. If you had been hiking on the south side of the volcano on that morning, you likely would have survived (albeit with a need for a change of underwear)
If I lived near a volcano Id rather treat even the smallest warnings as time to flee.
i live in the lahar zone of Mt Rainer we dont really do that lol, we barely get any training on what to do the only thing they tell us is where the lahar evacuation routes are and expect us to get out of the valley in time.
@@tristanr7799 remember to time earthquake gaps and if they become any more bigger than the average magnitude, then bolt it immediately
@@tripwire3992 Yeah better to have a false positive than to risk a false negative volcanos like Rainer where a flank failure eruption is geologically imminent aren't really risks that one can walk away from if you are wrong and you stay only for it to erupt....
The problem with that is that you would constantly be on the run. The smallest warnings around faults and subduction zones are constantly and consistently happening. However, I would be on alert for concentrated clusters of earthquakes and be monitoring data from the USGS (it's public domain).
@@Dragrath1 yes but flank failures aren't as deadly as you think when it comes to Rainer, its the lahar that everyone is worried about it can travel miles and can reach the Puget sound, which has over 10 different cities in its path with around 200k people, the good thing is the lahar takes around 25-40 minutes to get to you depending on where you are.
Was in Winnipeg when it happened. A couple of days later it was like a fog in Winnipeg but it was the ash. Then weeks later was driving west and in Montana it was like snow on the roads. Got out to touch it and it was like fine concrete powder. Then a few weeks later drove south from Washington and saw it erupt again. Like a big mushroom cloud. Lots of people stopped to take photos but we kept going just in case it decided to blow out our side...
I can remember hearing the explosion. I was on Three Mile Beach on Lake Okanagan in BC, 420 kilometres away. The sound was like a huge low boom coming from the south by southwest from where I was standing. By nightfall a thin coating of dust landed on everything.
I was 14 at the time and I can remember the media coverage of the volcano including the huge bulge. When it was shown how the blast happened, it seemed completely obvious that the blast would go out to the side.
I remember the eruption so clearly as I was living in Seattle at the time. It was a terrifying day to say the least.
My great uncle used to work for the USGS. He told me him and a friend were by the mountain the night before the eruption.
A close friend of mine’s mother grew up in Washington at that time, she collected a full water bottle of volcanic ash that had coated her car and that bottle is mine now. It’s an interesting little piece in a collection of minor historical pieces I’ve gathered.
I remember seeing on the news bulletin on the television about this particular eruption, and It's something that I will remember forever. I learned at a first aid class that volcanic eruptions were the most dangerous and destructive events over earthquakes, storms, floods, and bushfires.
government: "everything is fine"
mount saint helens: "lemme fix that real quick"
I’ve had a fascination with the Mt. St. Helens eruption for my entire life.
I’ve only recently discovered your channel, and now you’ve made a video about it?
Thank you.
Excellent and i love your some of your comments. Short and concise. Thanks