Harry Truman –- and his 16 cats -– refused to leave home at the base of Mount St. Helens before the eruption. The 83-year-old operated a lucrative lodge on Spirit Lake. (May 10, 2000)
Posted on 10/03/2004 3:57:36 PM PDT by NCjim
A reawakening volcano sparked a makeshift festival here Sunday, as thousands of people staged parties at every wide spot in the two-lane road to the mountain.
Geologic spectators set up lawn chairs in the beds of pickup trucks and fired up barbecues from the park entrance to the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center at Milepost 43 - where the road is closed just 8.5 miles from the simmering volcano. Impromptu entrepreneurs hawked hot dogs and coffee.
"There's such amazing energy here, and a connection among the people here. People are exchanging addresses and e-mails and telling their stories and sharing their binoculars," said Roberta Miller, 62, of Electric City.
At the futuristic visitor center, with a view straight into the crater, the wraparound veranda was jammed with people in lawn chairs - most of them with cameras.
"It's beyond amazing," said Steven Uhl, 31, of Everett, who's tried to visit every year since 1982. "I've been a volcano nut since 1980. Seeing the big eruption on the 18th made me a nut."
"Just to be here is almost a religious experience," Uhl said, though he noted as he scanned the throngs: "A lot of these people weren't even interested three weeks ago."
Debbi Pflughoeft, 49, Rogue River, Ore., said she's wanted to study volcanoes "since I was a little girl."
"My parents told me girls don't do things like that, but the bug is still there," said Pflughoeft, who drove up with her husband Wednesday night.
Chris Sawyer, 40, of Dundee, Ore., had a large camera with a big zoom lens set up on a tripod in what he hoped was a good spot.
"I hope to see something," he said. "It'd be neat if it spews something over and out."
Miller arrived Friday and was camping nearby at Seaquest State Park.
"It is just absolutely amazing that in our lifetimes ... we're getting two different episodes," she said. "It's too good to waste. We had to be here."
Nearby, an artist known as "O" from Santa Monica, Calif., was working on a 4-by-5-foot painting of the mountain, using three dozen cans of bargain house paint in various tones, mostly grays, blues and olives.
O, who declined to give his age but appeared to be in his 40s, had completed much of the painting. The top part was blank, waiting for what he called "the money shot."
Officials felt people were "out of harm's way" at Coldwater Ridge, said Peter Frenzen, monument scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees the mountain and surrounding Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
The agency evacuated the Johnston Ridge Observatory just five miles from the mountain on Saturday due to concern about volcanic signals indicating a possible magma release.
"We feel more comfortable now that we've pulled back to what we consider a safer distance," Frenzen said. "We understand it's exciting and interesting for folks.
Harmonic Convergence redux.
I remember about 15 years ago, a skyscraper was being demolished in Boston on a Saturday morning. My wife and I got up at 4AM so that we could be in Boston by sunrise to see the demolition. To our surprise, there were many thousands of people there all set up with lawn chairs and coolers. The police had to set up barriers to keep people a safe distance back. My wife and I just shook our heads at all these people who had no life at all.
Harry Truman –- and his 16 cats -– refused to leave home at the base of Mount St. Helens before the eruption. The 83-year-old operated a lucrative lodge on Spirit Lake. (May 10, 2000)
Fine, but I think Mother Nature's gonna make that call as to what constitutes a "safe distance". Good luck, dummy.
I'm gonna save this for posterity.
Hey, although I'm not overly fond of Northwest "cool", a small blow-off from Mount St. Helens is a larger geophysical event than YOU'll ever experience, even including that moonshine still explosion.
Good grief--I KNOW one of the people interviewed! Hope everyone stays safe.
It's not quite like getting as close as is "safe" to see an atomic bomb go off, but I think I'd rather be as far away as possible.
He died, didn't he?
He did die and I don't think they ever found his remains. He was right on top of the section of the mountain that blew off in the 1980 eruption.
Sounds like we have the potential for a group Darwin Award.
More like the potential for Moronic Convergence.
This reminds me of the Vega party in the movie "Contact."
It's always nice to hear from one's children, right???
Well, I'm sure that cheered you right up.
I'm sorry about the cats.
(I assume that Mr. Truman is no longer with us?)
Oh gosh Kit! Tell William to get out of there! I can tell you that I remember 5/18/80 just like it was yesterday and trust me, it was not nice. For a year afterwards, the erruptions continued and the ash was dreadful. We used my old panty hose over the air cleaner on our cars - I had to hand wash all the rose bush leaves and the leaves of the other plantings. That ash is literally ground glass and it is a car killer. I don't think this erruption will be anything like 1980 because the top of the mountain blew at that time, however, it is still capable of sending ash and poison gases at incredible speeds - that is how so many died in 1980. That event was Mother Nature at her worst.
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