WEBVTT - Selects: When Mount St. Helens Blew Its Top 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:01.680 Everyone. It's Josh. 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:05.960 For this week's s YSK Selects. I've chosen our January 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:10.080 twenty twenty three episode on the Mount Saint Helen's eruption. 0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:13.640 It seems like just last year. It's a really good 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:19.759 episode that's packed with science, action, adventure, heroics, life and death, danger, 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.840 It's got it all. It's one of my favorite episodes, 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:30.040 so I hope you enjoy it as well. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:37.800 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:42.680 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.320 I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and sitting in for Jerry 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:49.480 today is our great friend and co producer Dave Sea, 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:55.000 and the C stands for cool. Say hello Dave, Hi, everybody, 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.960 that's pretty. That's a really great Dave impression. 0:00:58.280 --> 0:00:59.400 He's a troll. 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:07.959 Yes, I always hear him. 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:07.399 As Dave is great. I wish you all knew him, 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:09.840 but we do, and so he's ours. You're gonna have 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:11.240 to take our word for it. That's right. 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.240 Speaking of take our word for it, Chuck, I have 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:17.040 to say to all the people who don't know much 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.720 about Mount Saint Helen's, prepare to have your socks knocked. 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.480 Off, or your lid blown. 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.640 Or your skin seared off of your your muscle. 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.679 Yeah, this is a good one. This is I mean, 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:30.720 this is so bread and butter stuff. You should know 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:33.520 it is. I don't know why it took us almost 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:34.840 sixteen years to get to it. 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:37.840 And none of that margarine stuff are low fat. It's 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.679 like full milk fat butter. Man bread and butter stuff. 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.039 You should know salted butter even you like salted huh. 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:47.840 It depends what you're using it for. I like just 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.280 plain unsalted butter, even on a bread and butter piece 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:52.440 of like bread with butter. 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.560 Yeah, mainly with like baking and cooking. It's like that's 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:56.240 when it matters. 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.080 Yeah, I gotcha. What's your brand? 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:00.520 Oh? 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:00.920 Boy? 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.720 It depends. I mean I love to get the heat 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:06.280 to be that guy, but I do love to get 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.919 the local butter when we go to our farmer's market 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:10.240 and get it from our CSA. 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:11.359 What's wrong with that? 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:14.639 Well, I don't know. Can't you say, park Ca? 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:15.639 Can you right? 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:18.560 You must be a social justice warrior you buy local butter. 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.160 I do you like that? What's the stuff? The Irish 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:22.359 butter in the grocery store? 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:25.440 That's my brand? Carry Gold? 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.000 Carry Gold. That's good too, Like I've. 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.840 I've researched it, like I've literally researched the butter because 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:33.520 I want to get the most bang for my buck, 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.240 and it is at the top of basically every list. 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.840 It's good of like any butter of any kind, it's 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:40.120 really really good butter. 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:42.400 Yeah, I totally agree. I love carry gold. I take 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:43.120 that stuff camping. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:45.640 Yeah, I carried it around in my pocket. 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:48.880 Well, I like it. You can get a tub. It's 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:51.040 a smaller tub, but I do like a spreadable tub 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:52.040 as opposed to a stick. 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:54.800 I haven't seen the tub. We have a stick because 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:57.040 we have a cute little butter dish that. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:00.320 We use, so we use the sticks. 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:05.680 So anyway, back to Mount Saint Helens the episode today. 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:08.560 I was four years old when this happened, so I 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.200 mean I didn't know what was going on, but I imagine 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:12.800 you were like, holy cow, this is one of the 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:14.720 most amazing things I've ever seen on my TV. 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.320 Yeah, I was nine, and I remember it being a 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.480 big deal. But it's funny when I was researching this 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.840 and then watching there's a really really great thing on 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:26.880 YouTube that I recommend that A and E put out 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:30.480 years ago. It had to be it was called minute 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:35.920 by minute colon. The eruption of Mount Saint Helen's really 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.160 gripping stuff. As A and E used to do. You know, 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:40.440 they probably still do that kind of stuff. But I 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:43.360 don't know all of the media around it. I was thinking, 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.480 like man, and I don't know if it was more 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:49.440 regional or if it truly was nationwide. But I remember 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:53.320 the eruption, but I didn't remember like the six weeks 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:55.640 leading up to it, which was a very big deal. 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.760 Yeah, although I think it was more of like a yeah, 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:03.040 regional thing for this the lead up. And then also 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:07.800 if you were a geologist, a volcanologists, a seismologist, anything 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.080 that had to do with volcanoes erupting or mountains, then 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:12.880 it would have been a big deal to you too. 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.880 And it definitely attracted them from far and wide. And 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:20.679 because there was so much warning and it was able 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.240 to buy it, I mean, Mount Saint Helens was able 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:25.480 to kind of draw to it like a magnet. All 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:31.040 of these amazingly well trained researchers. They were there when 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:34.240 it went off, and it's probably the most best documented 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.320 volcano in history because of that. 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:39.080 Yeah, I mean, because like you said, the Mount Saint 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.000 Helens is basically saying it's coming everyone. Would you like 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.040 to document this? Yeah, I'm telling you again it's coming, 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.160 and I'll show you in lots of different scary ways 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:53.280 that it's coming. And people left, people stayed, people came there, 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:59.400 people like tourists came to see this thing. So for sure, 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:00.760 let's get into it. 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:05.880 Okay, So just a real quick refresher, we've done volcanoes, 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:08.360 and I think we've done super volcanoes too, because that 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:09.120 sounds like us. 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:14.560 Yeah, twenty ten was volcanoes, twenty seventeen with super volcanoes. 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:15.279 Okay. 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:17.400 So we talked a lot about how volcanoes work in 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:19.599 those episodes, So if you want to know a lot 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.240 more in depth, go check those out. But just as 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.279 a refresher for the specific kind of volcano that mount 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:30.080 Saint Helens is. It's a stratovolcano, and it's created when 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:35.200 one younger plate is subducted under an older plate, and 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.000 as the younger plate goes down into the bowels of 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:40.679 the Earth, all of the rocket carries with it gets 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:44.000 heated up. Same with water too, and that stuff travels 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.880 upward because it's less dense than the surrounding mantle down below. 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.640 And as it gets closer and closer to the crust, 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:52.760 it wants to pop out of there. Yeah, but it 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.880 can't necessarily, sometimes it can, and when it can, it 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.719 just spews out all sorts of molten lava and that 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.679 builds the volcano in it kind of a cone shape, 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:05.000 which is what Mount Saint Helens was up until May eighteenth, 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:05.799 nineteen eighty. 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:09.880 Yeah. It's a part of the cascade arc arranged there 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.200 in the Pacific Northwest. And all of this happened and 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.360 you know, geologically speaking, pretty quickly. Yeah, it happened over 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:19.360 the course of about forty thousand years in the case 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:24.080 of Mount Saint Helens, which is pretty speedy. And Ed 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:25.680 helped us out with this when did a great job 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.160 on this article, and Ed points out that you know, 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:30.520 in the Pacific Northwest, that's why you see so many 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.960 you know, sort of coney mountains like that is because 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.880 of this cascade arc and how these mountains were formed, 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:39.960 you know, not too long ago. 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.040 Right, Yeah, forty thousand years ago, maybe less. 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.279 Forty thousand for Saint Helens, and I think the whole 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:47.159 arc is less than one hundred. 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:51.480 Right, So the whole thing that's driving Mount Saint Helens 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:56.880 and apparently also there's some other I guess volcanic mountains 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.599 in the area, like Adams. I think Mount Adams is 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.960 one is well. Yeah, there's a there's a magma chamber 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:06.400 somewhere under there, I think possibly miles and miles below 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.560 the surface. But under normal circumstances, like I said, when 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.280 a straddo volcanoes formed, the lava just kind of is 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.160 able to find cracks in the crust and like it's 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:18.800 released through there and it builds the mountain up slowly 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.640 and slowly. But if there's not a crack in the crust, 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:25.480 as in the case where Mount Saint Helens is, that 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.120 magma starts to back up. It hits the crust and 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.840 it starts to back up below and all of a 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:34.120 sudden you have a lot of stuff going on that 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:39.119 makes things go kaboom when the right set of circumstances happen. 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.680 Yeah, this is this is pretty notable. This magma chamber 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:47.800 is well is and was quite large, and like you said, 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:49.800 it's it's looking for a place to go. But if 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:51.600 it doesn't have a place to go, what will happen? 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:53.360 And as you'll see, this is what happened in the 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:57.000 case of Mount Saint Helens is it starts bulging, and 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.720 like the mountain, if you're a geologist, it's super exciting 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.600 to see this happen, even though it's very scary and dangerous. 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.040 But when a geologist sees an actual mountain start to 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:10.480 bulge out in a direction and we're talking, you know, 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:12.720 hundreds of feet of bulge over the course of a 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:16.880 pretty short period of time, then it's pretty like it's 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:19.200 a pretty notable thing. And that's exactly what was happening 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.440 in the case of the magma chamber there in Washington. 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:25.480 Yeah, like this pressure is building up so much it's 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:29.440 causing a boil on the mountain. The mountain grows a 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:33.319 goiter basically, and that's just full of pressure and magma 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:35.840 just waiting to go off. It doesn't always go off, 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:39.560 And in fact, Mount Saint Helen's had two bulges also 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:45.199 called cryptodomes, which is pretty awesome from previous volcanic eruptions. 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.840 One was called Goat Rocks bulge and then the other 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:52.120 one was called the Sugar Bowl bulge, and they just 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.040 never like the magma found its way out other ways, 0:08:56.400 --> 0:08:58.800 but the bulge was left. This is a new bulge, 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:00.880 and like you said, it was growing I think about 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.280 six feet a day. Every day it kept growing another 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:07.960 six feet, which is really fast for a mountain to grow. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.319 And that was one of the big signs initially that 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.720 something was going on. And one more thing before we 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.160 started to get into Mount Saint Helens itself, Chuck, I 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.240 think we need to say, like Mount Saint Helens was big. 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.160 It was a big eruption, but it was not the 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.440 biggest eruption Saint Helens has ever had, And apparently the 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:30.400 biggest eruption it's ever had came just about four thousand 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:36.160 years ago, which is within traditional like folk tale memory. 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.800 Yeah. I mean it had been an active volcano for 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:45.840 forty thousand years, but the big one before nineteen eighty was. Yeah, 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:47.160 like you said, for I was trying to look at 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.800 a specific year, but let's just say four thousand years ago. Yeah, 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:52.440 because once you get back that far, you know who cares? 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.160 Who cares? But it became, like you said, part of folklore. 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:01.360 The indigenous people there, especially the puyall Up people, called 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:06.880 the mountain Lewittowit, and there was a LeWitt Brewing company, 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:09.440 so I wanted to shout them out. This is one 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:14.360 of those things where I thought, I wonder why, because 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.760 there's been such a push to change names of things 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.560 over the past like decade or so, this is one 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.800 that was. It seems so like sort of egregious that 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:27.720 we should call it LeWitt and not Mount Saint Helen's. 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:30.680 That I'm pretty curious. I'm sure there's been pushes over 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:32.480 the years to get it changed. But the Europeans, of 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:36.120 course named it Mount Saint Helens in seventeen ninety two 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:41.160 after Captain George Vancouver. If that name rings a bell, 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.360 it should gave the name of it because of a 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:50.320 diplomat name. Allan fitz Herbert didn't call it fitz Herbert 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.199 Peak or anything like that because his noble title was 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.400 Baron Saint Helen's, thank god. But here's the rub is 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:01.120 that Allan fitz Herbert never even saw Mount Saint Helens, 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.520 the mountain named after him. So like, I don't know, 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.400 maybe maybe let's call this one LEWITTT Yeah, I think 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:10.679 that's a great idea actually, And the reason they call 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.800 it LeWitt that was she was named after a like 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:20.280 a famous volcanic fire tender woman and Lewett and a 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.280 couple of other men who fell in love with her 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:27.360 and fought for her became LeWitt, became Mount Saint Helens 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:28.800 or Lewett, if you want to call it that. 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:31.800 And then the other the other men who were fighting 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.240 for became Mount Hood and Mount Adams. They were smited 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.439 by the Creator God and turned into mountains for fighting. 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:41.640 And there's legends not just from the puyol Up but 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.920 other indigenous tribes around the area that something really big happened. 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.200 And it looks like what it is is a geo myth, 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.560 which we've talked about before. And I think the Great 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.880 Floods episode that has been handed down generation after generation 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:59.000 that describes this enormous eruption four thousand years ago pretty 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.439 good stuff, Yeah, for sure. And it was a big 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:03.880 eruption too. There's just one other thing. There is a 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:08.120 layer of tephra of basically volcanic ash and debris and 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:12.240 stuff that is so thick and so wide it goes 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:16.280 up into British Columbia and sixty two miles away from 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:20.280 Mount Saint Helen it's still twenty inches thick, almost two 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.199 feet thick of ash sixty two miles away. That's how 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.559 big that four thousand year ago eruption was that's huge. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.400 And all this to say that Mount Saint Helen's, which 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.000 has an s by the way, did you know that? 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:34.440 Yeah? I did. 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:35.880 You keep saying, Helen. I just wondered. 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:39.360 I'm being short. I don't want to take up too 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:41.240 much time talking about certainly. 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:43.600 That's good. 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:46.240 That reminds me of the guy in college who fell 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:49.040 on the sidewalk and his books splayed out and then 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:50.280 he acted like he was reading. 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.800 Yeah, I love that story. I forgot about him. 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.720 All this to say is that Mount Saint Helen's had been, 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.760 you know, active, had a long history of activity. So 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.840 it's not like anyone ever thought, well, that thing is 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:04.400 done and it's never going to happen again. 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:05.960 No, definitely not. 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.080 Because also in the nineteenth century there was a lot 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.199 of eruptions too. There's a painting by a Canadian artist 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.600 named Paul Caine who painted an eighteen forty seven eruption. So, 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:20.679 I mean, starting in the nineteenth century, Mount Saint Helen's 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:27.360 was documented pretty clearly scientifically too, as being an eruptive volcano, 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:28.840 a disruptive volcano. 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:29.960 You can almost say. 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:33.520 All right, shall we take a break. Yeah, it's a 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.080 nice prelude, I think so too. All right, we'll be 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:40.360 back right after this, softy. 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:44.160 Josh so. 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:04.600 Okay. So we got a nice background on Mount Saint Helens. 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.800 It had been very active for about or on and 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:12.079 off active for forty thousand years, including I believe the 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.680 last sort of big one was in eighteen fifty seven. 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:19.480 Not too long after that, in nineteen oh eight, about 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:23.520 a million acres of land became part of Columbia National Forest, 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:27.760 which was hence renamed Gifford Pinchhot or Pinchot. I never 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.920 know how to say that the Bronson Pinchot National Forest 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:33.280 National Forest, and that was in nineteen forty nine, and 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:38.280 Mount Saint Helens is inside that National Forest. All this 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:40.480 is sort of a long way of saying it wasn't 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:44.200 like super populated. It didn't have wasn't surrounded by neighborhoods 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.560 and suburbs and stuff like that. But there was something 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.200 or is still something called Spirit Lake there near the 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.320 base of the mountain, which is they have like youth 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.880 camps there, People had cabins here and there. There were 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:02.360 recreational activities that all over the place. So it's not 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.840 like no one was there, but it wasn't heavily populated. 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:10.280 Right well put, so the whole thing starts. Actually even 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:12.800 before the whole thing started, and I saw in nineteen 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:17.440 seventy five the two volcanologists published a paper saying that 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.040 it was very likely Mount Saint Helens was going to 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.920 erupt in the twentieth century at some point, like a 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:23.360 big one. 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:24.400 Yeah. 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.440 And five years later, on March twentieth, nineteen eighty, the 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:31.320 whole thing was kicked off by a four point zero earthquake, 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:33.640 which is nothing to sneeze at, and it was at 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:36.000 the mountain, Like this earthquake took place at the mountain, 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.320 and all of a sudden, within five days there were 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:43.560 quake storms. There was twenty four quakes of four point 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:47.240 zero or greater within eight hours. Oh man, when a 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.440 volcano starts doing that and you're detecting it, that's when 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.840 the geologists come running from far and wide. 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:56.880 Yeah. So they you know, the word gets out, and 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:58.840 they did cone running from far and wide, and they 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:03.200 you know, set up camp there at various places. Other 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.120 just sort of as I learned from watching this an 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:11.160 e special, that there are like volcano chasers even that 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:14.440 they hear about this stuff. They're fascinated by it. I 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:18.720 guess it's just sort of amateur geo enthusiasts. And people 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:21.160 started kind of coming in there because they got wind 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:25.080 that something may be brewing at Mount Saint Helen's including 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:26.960 and this is you know, there are all kinds of 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.040 people we could feature story wise, but one gentleman we 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.720 are going to feature. His name was David Johnston, and 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.920 he was a volcanologist at the USGS, the United States 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.720 Geographical Survey, and he was one of the There were 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:42.720 some great interviews with him in this A and E special. 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.240 He was very young guy, super excited to be there, 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:48.560 and he was one of the ones kind of sounding 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:50.960 the alarm along with his partner and this guy named 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.000 Don Swanson about hey, like you know, the s is 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:58.680 getting real here everybody, and it looks like thing like 0:16:58.680 --> 0:16:59.920 people need to start leaving. 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:03.960 Yeah, Like the thing is is there were the people 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:05.880 who did live on the mountain were not the kind 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.080 of folk who listened to like you know, the governmental 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:12.520 net and college boys or the government to be told 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:16.280 like leave your home. And then also there was those 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:19.200 youth groups that were like you're going to ruin our week. 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:26.320 At Spirit Lake, there was also Weyerhaeuser exactly, it's like 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.000 a roller rink over there. And then there was Weyerhauser 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.400 who had a contract to be able to log on 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.359 the on the mountain. They definitely didn't want to have 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:37.760 to shut down operations. So there's a lot of pressure, 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:40.560 a surprising amount of pressure, you know, more than you 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.840 would think, to keep the mountain open. And David Johnston 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.679 and Don Swanson and some of the other colleagues were like, 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:49.800 you really can't do this, and they managed to convince 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:52.480 the governor of Washington that it was the right move. 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.600 And then later on, as we'll see, there was even 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.720 more pressure to reopen because things didn't go as fast 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.000 as everyone thought, and they managed to push that back 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.960 as well, and as a result, David Johnston is frequently 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.800 credited for saving thousands of lives. Yeah, potentially, which is 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.080 pretty cool. I mean, and everything I've seen about him, 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:15.760 he was a genuinely great person and also like a 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:18.120 really great pioneer in volcanology too. 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.359 Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. They did eventually set up what they 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:25.080 called a red zone, and a lot of people did evacuate. 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.520 There were some notable people who didn't. Certainly, we need 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:34.040 to mention Harry Truman obviously not the president, but he 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.080 was this old codger who ran the lodge there, and 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:40.879 he became a folk hero because he famously thumbed his 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:44.280 nose and stayed and said, you know, I'm a part 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:46.480 of this place. It's a part of me. If the 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:50.280 mountain goes, I'm going to go with it. Art Carney 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.480 played him in the movie version. He got a lot 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:58.879 of media attention along with his sixteen cats, which is 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:02.480 the only part of the story. Like, hey, man, I'm 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.719 all for people evacuating and keep people safe, but I'm 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:09.280 also like some old old mountain man wants to stay 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.000 up there and go go down with a volcano. Like, yeah, 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:15.440 that's his right, but send the cats away. Don't say 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.639 like I'm gonna go down and kill these sixteen cats 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:19.520 at the same time. 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:22.520 Yeah, it's kind of like being buried in like you know, 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:25.399 medieval times and having your live horse buried with you. 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:27.199 Yeah. I just I don't know. Man. Once I heard 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.679 about the cats, because I was all into this guy, right, 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:31.840 and then I heard about the cats, I was like, oh, dude, 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:33.600 you should have at least sent the cats away. 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:44.560 Yeah, no way, not a lodge codure. So Harry Truman 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:46.680 will come back in. This is Harry ar Truman, by 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.879 the way, everybody said his middle initial to differentiate him. 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:51.359 He'll come back in later. 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:54.879 But so the last thing that we happened on the 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.280 mountain March twenty fifth, in eight hours, there's twenty four 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.600 four point zero or greater magnitude earthquakes, and that brought 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:06.000 everybody running. This whole thing was so perfectly planned that 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:10.120 on the day of the eruption there was the mineral 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:13.600 and gem show in Yakima, like I think, less than 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.560 one hundred miles away from Mount Saint Helens. So anybody 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.399 who had anything to do with geology just happened to 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:24.240 be in the area or was purposefully in the area. 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.800 And then on March twenty seventh, it's just getting more 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:30.200 and more and more. There was an actual eruption, right. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:33.560 Yeah, So this was I mean, compared to what eventually 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.400 ended up happening, you could call this sort of mini eruption. 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:40.960 Even though it sent it made a big boom. Apparently 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:43.800 it was a pretty cloudy day so it wasn't super visible, 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:47.480 but the ashcolumn went up sixty five hundred feet into 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:47.840 the air. 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:49.520 It's nothing to sneeze it. 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.680 And a new crater formed at the summit, which grew 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.919 to about sixteen hundred feet wide, so it was a 0:20:56.920 --> 0:20:58.920 major thing. There was another one on the twenty eighth, 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:02.919 again throwing ash into the air. And this is like 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:07.359 basically from that point through the big one in mid May, 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:14.879 it was just constant warning, constant upheople, mud slides, avalanches, 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:19.120 craters growing, and like the mountain is saying, like it's 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.320 going to happen people, This is not a false alarm 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:25.640 until things calm down. And that's what you were talking 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.200 about earlier, Like things kind of settled down. 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:32.440 On what was that like May around the fifteenth. 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.479 Yeah, around the fifteenth of May to where the people 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:37.760 got antsy that were evacuated and said, hey, listen, we 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.239