2 hours, 28 minutes ago
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U.S. National - AP |
Posted on 10/02/2004 1:36:54 PM PDT by nwctwx
Edited on 10/02/2004 1:43:12 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
By PEGGY ANDERSEN, Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE - Government seismologists raised the alert level for Mount St. Helens on Saturday after its second steam eruption in two days, saying the next blast could threaten life and property in the remote area near the volcano.
The hundreds of visitors at the Johnston Ridge Observatory just five miles from Mount St. Helens were asked to leave. They went quickly to their cars and drove from the scene.
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2 hours, 28 minutes ago
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By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press Writer
PULLMAN, Wash. - Glenn Johnson remembers running outside with canisters to catch some of the volcanic ash that began falling on Pullman after Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980. He wanted a souvenir. "Little did I know I would be shoveling ash for a week and a half," recalled Johnson, now mayor of this town near the Idaho state line.
Across the Northwest, veterans of the 1980 eruption were keeping a wary eye on the volcano as it ominously rocked with earthquakes, then belched a plume of steam and ash into the sky around noon on Friday. Experts said the small eruption may not be the last.
"The history of the volcano suggests it could be an opening salvo and we'll see more events like this," said Jeff Wynn, the chief scientist for volcano hazards at the federal Cascade Volcano Observatory. He called Friday's brief eruption a "throat-clearing."
The 1980 eruption killed 57 people, mostly clustered near the mountain, and volcanic activity continued until 1986.
Much of the cement-like ash fell on eastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana as thousands of travelers became stranded. Schools and businesses closed. Mountains of ash had to be moved and dumped.
In an effort to be better prepared this time, local governments across the region have been reviewing their disaster plans. The state Emergency Management Division, much maligned for poor performance in 1980, activated its Emergency Operations Center Wednesday and will keep it staffed round-the-clock, spokesman Rob Harper said.
Officials hope to avoid a repeat of the events that started at 8:32 a.m. on Sunday, May 18, 1980.
Shaken by an earthquake, the north face of the mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. A mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, dumping more than 520 million tons of dark, gray ash from Yakima to Bozeman, Mont.
The eruption lasted 9 hours.
The ash turned day into night. Grocery stores ran out of food. Surgical masks to cover the nose and mouth were in short supply. There were 2,500 people stranded in the town of Ritzville by 5 to 7 inches of ash.
Ash weighed heavily on roofs, forcing residents to shovel it off. Communities struggled to find places to dump it all.
Patty Phillips was riding a motorcycle from Spokane west to Moses Lake, and was forced by the ash to hunker down for two days in the small town of Davenport.
Now she lives in Lind, a tiny town about 75 miles southwest of Spokane that has a wry highway sign proclaiming "Drop in, Mount St. Helens did."
Phillips is not too worried about the new rumblings from the volcano, but she isn't taking any chances.
"I asked my husband to stock up with milk," she said Thursday, remembering that commodity was in short supply in grocery stores after the last eruption.
Susan Cuff still has a small jar of ash she collected as a souvenir when she was a college student at the University of Montana in Missoula.
"I stayed home and watched it fall like snow," said Cuff, now the spokeswoman for the health department in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. After the eruption, there were persistent rumors the ash might become acid when mixed with water. People worried about breathing it into their lungs. They weren't sure if they should use water to wash off the ash, or push it off roofs and vehicles with brooms. The fine ash was hard on motor vehicles, clogging air filters, scratching windshields, and mucking up bearings. Six Spokane city buses burned up their engines within two days. Cuff said officials are better prepared this time to warn people with respiratory problems to stay inside, and not to operate motor vehicles because the ash can damage the engine. State officials insist that modern communication systems and emergency plans will make them better prepared if Mount St. Helens erupts again. Still, Johnson's enduring memory of the 1980 eruption was that emergency management news was very slow coming out of the state capital, leaving communities to fend for themselves. "There's a lot of silent hope that it all blows on Olympia because we got no help from them last time," Johnson said. ___ On the Net: Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network: http://www.pnsn.org/HELENS/welcome.html
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Our Seismo-Cam shows you a regularly updated image of a drum called a helicorder.
The helicorder receives ground sensor data from the UW Seismology Lab. Our feed normally comes from a sensor on Mount Freemont, which is near Mount Rainier. On 9/30/04, the feed was temporarily switched to the "Source of Smith Creek" sensor, northeast of the Mount St. Helens crater to better display vibrations there. Our helicorder will display quakes of greater than 1.0 magnitude. |
No, God's not mad but this might be an example: I firmly believe that Gore's team was doing everything they could to steal the election away from Bush. Bush rightfully won Florida. Florida might just be a little bit busy cleaning up after 4 hurricanes in the span of 5 weeks to have a lot of shinnanigans going on pre-election. I don't know if that's what's going on, I'm just posting some comments as thought provoking.
P.S. That map is wrong. I saw that last week and the paths aren't right. But what do you expect from a lying liberal to create it!!
When was the last time you heard a tv evangelis say something like that? I havne't heard rhetoric like that in a long time.
Wow. Any news on when it will occur in their estimation?
(They'll pray for you to send 'em more money!)
Jerry Falwell blamed 9-11 on America's loss of moral values.
When the volcano blows, will John Kerry go back to "Orange Alert?"
Jerry Falwell brings to mind the sin of gluttony too.
Leni
That's why I am pursuing a history degree. I am interested in journalism just because I would like to see somebody do it right for once....it just is a fun job to do and you play an important role in giving people information they need...when done right.
When done wrong, you become a Dem spinner. But anyway, my current plan is to become a history teacher, but if I do go into journalism, I am glad I got my undergrad in something besides journalism.
A journalism degree is worthless....you need something actually valuable in a specific content area. If I go into journalism, I will get that at the masters level.
Part of the reason our journalists are so bad is that they can get jobs by skating through college as a Journalism major.
This means the people who get through tend to be morons rather than intelligent individuals who can ask good questions...
I bet a real nice reporter I met once, Bernard Choi, is having a heck of a time following all this up in the Seattle area. That guy has talent...
I say this because I think he may be at King-5.
It does! I lived next door to a house full of six J-students and they were clueless.
They had a couple of major concerns: how to arrange their daily class schedule so they wouldn't have classes on Fridays...so as to not interfere with skiing, and how to never have to take the simplest survey 101-level science courses. They were lazy, inconsiderate and without an original thought.
What they got out of the university experience is beyond me.
Why, a job at CBS, of course!
A comforting thought!
Well.....everything conforms to his larger will.
But, he isn't trying to "get our attention" etc.
But, by definition, he is God. What is happening is known and allowed by Him for a greater purpose we can't understand.
You are right...the Mt. St. Helens and Pacific Rim volcanic "Ring of Fire" has magma of completely different chemistry than the Hawaiian arc volcanos. The calc-alkalic suite that makes up the Ring of Fire volcanos is highly explosive. Hawaii volcanoes flow, Cascade volcanoes blow up.
And thats all I have to say about that.
Hope you are in a safe location.
Cool info Granite...but if you are in the Cascades, shouldn't your name be, "granodiorite"?
I don't think any of them ever found employent as journalists...even at CBS.
Hi horsie.
I sure I was I was back in Washington now for the eruption. The one in 1980 was soooooo COOL!
News conference going on now. Geologist predicts magma eruption within 24 hours.
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