SPLODY MOUNTAIN!

[annathepiper]

So, news is coming in that Mt. St. Helens is restless. Half of me is intrigued by this news and half of me is just a tad nervous, because, well, ACTIVE VOLCANO IN MY STATE. I mean, it could be worse--it could be Mt. Rainier acting up--but still.

I barely remember when St. Helens blew in 1980; I remember it being mentioned on the news and talked about at school. But the only lingering impact it has in these parts is all of the various little touristy knickknacks made out of what purports to be St. Helens volcanic ash, which you see sold at places like Pike Place Market downtown. But I had to poke around a little about the eruption just because, what with setting Faerie Blood in Seattle and having a heroine who grew up here, that event would have been part of her childhood and I wanted to figure out what she would remember. "Ash all over the place" is the answer to that question, for a five-year-old who grew up in Fremont.

Here's hoping St. Helens is just shifting around in her sleep. I'm all for getting life experiences to add verisimilitude to my writing, but a volcano blowing close enough to have an impact upon my life is one experience I can do without.

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Yup, ash all over the place was what I remember.

The impressive thing was that I was in Corvalls, OR at the time. That's nearly a six hour drive south from Seattle. And we still got an ash dusting.

I was six at the time, so about the same age. I also remember it being kind of cool that something that had left material evidence in my life was on the news, and there were a lot of pretty pictures of volcanoes on the t.v. all the time.

I also remember how annoyed we were six months later, when they started selling 'St. Helens Ash', since we'd just gone to a lot of effort to clean it all up. It wasn't anything special, and I still think of it as something worthless for tourists.

That's about it.

[annathepiper]

Six hours south of Seattle, but how far south of St. Helens? There's a bit of distance between the mountain and here. (I have yet to actually fix in my mind how much distance, but I remember passing by signs for Mt. St. Helens on the way down to Portland when I went down there in 2001.)

And yeah, I can see the whole volcanic ash thing being a LOT less interesting if you've had to spend time cleaning it up!

[ysabel.livejournal.com]

I remember the freak rainstorm we got about two days after St. Helens blew. (I lived in the mountains above Denver at the time.) A literal wall of water. It's not unusual for the weather to change suddenly here, but to go from sunny to being able to see a wall of water in the distance to watching it hit us to being dry again half an hour later and being able to see the wall of water receding in the distance was really strange.

[annathepiper]

That sounds wacky, yeah! I wonder what caused that to be set off.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

a volcano blowing close enough to have an impact upon my life is one experience I can do without.

It's not that bad. :)

[annathepiper]

Well, I suppose that given my distance from Mt. St. Helens, an actual eruption would mostly just be 'mildly annoying', if that. Just as long as Mt. Rainier stays quiet, though, I'm good! ;)

[ghost-light.livejournal.com]

I was in Tacoma. What I remember most was all the build up and the stories about Harry Truman in the news. There seemed to be nightly updates. When it finally blew, I was in a bowling alley sitting with my parents. My dad was a sports writer and meeting someone there that Sunday morning. He told us about St. Helen's and I was very, very upset that my parents were not more worried. I had visions of a Hawaii-style eruption with lava and rocks burying my grandparents in Centralia and I wanted to talk to them RIGHT THEN to make sure they were okay.

[annathepiper]

*blink* Wait a minute, what's the connection between Mt. St. Helens and Harry Truman? I think I missed something. :)

But heh! I can see thinking "Mauna Loa" when one thinks of "volcano", yeah! It's certainly the imagery that first comes to mind for me.

[ghost-light.livejournal.com]

Truman was an old codger who lived near Spirit Lake and refused to be evacuated. He lived up there with a house full of cats and did what seemed like daily interviews about how is was his home and he wasn't going to leave no matter what.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/mountsthelens/hary11.shtml

I was 9 when the mountain blew and I still remember my dad telling me the joke "Hey! Did you hear they finally found Harry Truman? He's sitting on top of the crater praying for another blow."

[annathepiper]

*grins!* Oh, okay! Cool. :)

[lyricae.livejournal.com]

I lived in the tri cities area and I would have been about 5. I remember that the grownups were talking about it and that I couldn't play outside because there was a thick layer of ash on everything. We all got our little jars and went out and collected some of the ash (though I've got no idea now what became of my jar). At my age it's hard to remember back that far ;-)

[annathepiper]

Hee! I can buy that being cool when you're five. Or scary, I suppose, depending!

[rain-girl-ak.livejournal.com]

I lived in Gig Harbor, WA at the time, and I was 9. If there was a buildup on the news, I was entirely unaware of it. St. Helens erupted on my father's birthday, so what I remember most are jokes about the "biggest birthday candle EVER!", and a huge disappointment that we couldn't see the ash cloud from where we lived. I don't even think we got any ash; it all blew east.

[annathepiper]

*giggle* Sounds like jokes that would have been made around my house. :) I was all the way in Kentucky, though, so all we got were the news reports!

Gig Harbor, huh?

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Me, too. Peacock Hill Rd, down near 144th. I went to Purdy Elementary and was 10 (4th grade). The year before I went to Artondale and we lived on Fox Island.

Small world.

No ash, none at all. But it *was* all over the news.

Re: Gig Harbor, huh?

[rain-girl-ak.livejournal.com]

We lived on 62nd Ave, right across the Sound from Fox Island. I also went to Artondale. We were there from '80-'82. I don't remember it very well, I think I blocked out most of those two years in the shock of suddenly moving to Alaska!

[firni.livejournal.com]

I was just going over my junior high/high school diaries and read about the original 'splodey and subsequent 'splodies.

What I'm having a hard time comprehending is that I actually kept a regular diary for a minimum of five years, starting with January of 1980. That's just weird.

SPLODEY!

[annathepiper]

*snicker* I have a diary that's more or less from 1982, and it sometimes amuses me to go back and look at it just to giggle at the awfulness of my handwriting. I mostly wrote about nifty episodes of my favorite TV shows at the time. God, I was a nerd. ;)

I have another diary from 1985 which is harder to read, partly due to writing about family ick, but also just due to my having written most of it in pencil, which is fading, and ALSO having written it in German script as a security measure to keep my brother from reading it.

[firni.livejournal.com]

I pretty much wrote about how much I hated school, everybody in it, the people who constantly tortured me, and how I'd love to blow each and every one of their heads off.

THESE days they'd probably put me away for writing that.

Also, Mt. Rainier blowing up would RULE. BYE BYE, PUYALLUP!

[annathepiper]

And Tacoma. Tacoma would be BURIED IN BOILING MUD! (solarbird has worked this out, you see. That's my lifemate!)

[firni.livejournal.com]

Excellent *rubs hands together in glee*

Oh wait, would Spanaway get it? Because my friend Marie lives there. I'd have to teleport her out, of course. *digs out brazier*

[annathepiper]

risu says that they would have to rename the airport to "Seattle-Boiling Mud Flats International Airport". Doesn't quite roll off the tongue in the same way, but it does have a certain panache to it!

Of course, I expect that landing the planes on boiling mud would be a bit awkward.

The airport itself would be safe

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

But Tacoma would not, so the name change would be apt. The Carbon, White, and Puyallup Rivers all converge into the Puyallup River at Commencement Bay. It's just not pretty.

None of Seattle's rivers flow out of Mt. Rainier, so it'd be fine.

Re: The airport itself would be safe

[annathepiper]

Yeah, we'd be mighty inconvenienced, I daresay, but that ain't nothing compared to TOWN COVERED IN BOILING MUD. *shudder*

Probably not

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Spanaway is east of Tacoma proper, and closer to Mt. Rainier. So you might think it would get it worse than Tacoma.

However, the Puyallup River is the main vector for mudslides, which are the big threat to life near Tacoma during a Mt. Rainier eruption. It passes well north of Spanaway and straight through Puyallup, and straight into Commencement Bay in downtown Tacoma. Orting, further up the river, is even more fucked. That's why they have regular emergency volcano drills there. Buckley and Enumclaw are pretty screwed too. If a big eruption comes, all those places are going to be covered in mud from 30 to hundreds of feet high.

The Nisqually River is another major vector for mudslides, but it passes well to the south of Tacoma. Fort Lewis would be cut in two, though, and Eatonville and Yelm would be buried. I-5 would probably have bridge washouts at both rivers, leaving higher-altitude parts of Tacoma that were not buried in mud isolated from the rest of the I-5 corridor. Supplies to help people in the city would have to be airlifted in, as the detour through the Narrows would probably be too long. That's assuming the accompanying earthquakes didn't take out the Narrows Bridge.

Hopefully, my mom, my sister Lisha, and various friends who live in the area will be out of town during this scenario.

Re: Probably not

[annathepiper]

So what you're telling us is, basically, a LOT of people would be extremely fucked.

HEY, MT. RAINIER! Let's not do the boiling mud scenario, okay? Kthxbye!

Re: Probably not

[firni.livejournal.com]

As long as it takes out Sumner Junior High School, I'll be a happy curmudgeon. For a few minutes.

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

I was living in Eastern Washington, Pasco. We were hit exceptionally hard. I was 11 years old, 5th grade. It was like armageddon actually. The sky went completely black and you could see a huge broiling, rolling, jet black sky moving with such speed you couldn't believe you'd live through it. The sky was the strangest sight - it wasn't like a cloud, or a tornado. It hung in huge, bulbous, rounds - like a vengeful God with a huge, inky black bunch of grapes about the size of the state of Texas, dangling them over the sky.

The street lights turned on, everyone huddled in their houses. My mom filled the bathtub, sinks, and every receptacle she could find with water, since they told us there wouldn't be clean water.

After the air cleared, it was like it had snowed. They were worried the ash was toxic, so they wouldn't allow us outside to play for literally weeks.

[annathepiper]

YOW.

Now that would be the kind of thing that'd probably make me have nightmares for a while if I were a kid in that situation! I was having nightmares periodically after the tornado that hit Louisville in 1974, and I don't remember it nearly as well as my older brother.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

I was 7, living in south Seattle. I remember a very fine layer of ash over everything, and I remember watching the news and seeing the utter blackout at noon in places like Yakima and Spokane. My best friend Jeremy's parents drove away to visit people somewhere and when they came home they had an entire trash can full of ash, which they parcelled out to friends and relatives for years.

Seattle's not likely to get hit very hard by Mt. St. Helens, if I remember right. It's too far for the lahars/mudflows (and she doens't have any glaciers left to be melted, anyway, just the standard snowpack if it's winter), and the prevailing winds should carry things eastward.

Portland, though, if she erupts southward, even prevailing winds wouldn't keep them from being dumped on by ash if it were a big eruption, I think. Mt. St. Helens is about 50 miles from Portland, and about 90 miles from Seattle.

I was living in Anchorage when Mt. Spurr erupted in 1992- it's 80 miles from Anchorage. We were blacked out for hours, and quite a bit of ash everywhere, no planes flying, smell of sulphur everywhere, but I remember thinking "that wasn't an eruption... the mountain's still there!" So funny things like that result from someone who grew up with Mt. St. Helens in the background. ;)

(here's a good timeline, just for fun reading- http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/helens/timeline.html)

Growing up in Seattle your char would have had some classic exposure to St. Helens in Washington State History classes if by nothing else- like the famous last radio message "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!" - which gave me chills when I heard about it in high school. (Another famous thing she would have seen would have been the Galloping Gertie video, of the Tacoma Narrows bridge hitting its resonance frequency and shattering.)

[annathepiper]

Heh. Not that it would ever come up in a story, but yeah, I'm sure Kendis got all of that stuff as a wee lass in Fremont. ^_^

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

True, that. It's Mt. Rainier that will bury Seattle.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

Your mention of the jet-black cloud sounds a lot like what I saw when Mt. Spurr blew- my roommates and I were driving around the bend of Turnagain Arm, near Portage Glacier, and I looked down the Arm (Anchorage-wards) and said... "That's a funny-looking rain cloud. Look, it's solid black right down to the water!"

Funny how some things you say no one ever forgets!

A couple of things

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was in 10 and spending that morning in Ballard, so my memories are pretty relevant for a character growing up in Fremont.

I remember the buildup on the news. I started watching nightly news regularly the previous year during the hostage crisis, so I caught the whole coverage.

Based on listening to the scientists, I was pretty sure that the thing was going to blow at any time, and was amazed at the attitude of many people who were dismissing goverment warnings and entering the off-limits "red zone." (It turns out the zone was too small, and most of the people killed were in "safe" areas.)

Like everyone else, I was amused by Harry E. Truman, the lodge owner at Spirit Lake who became an instant local celebrity. He was a cantakerous old coot who refused to accept that any eruption was coming and promised to hold out during any eruption up at the lake. He'd been there all his life and wasn't about to move now!

The earthquake that accompanied the eruption probably woke me up--I got up just after 8:30--though I didn't realize it until later in the day. We were visiting my aunt in Ballard and didn't watch the TV or listen to the radio that morning before heading home. We couldn't see the cloud, either. But we turned on our car radio around noon just before getting home and heard the news.

There was no ash or mud in the Puget Sound region. The prevailing winds in the upper atmosphere were south and east. Portland got a huge amount of ash, as did places in Oregon to the south. Yakima was dark at noon that day. Ash and mud also rushed down the rivers near the mountain.

I-5 was washed out at the Toutle River. The bridge simply came down with the mud. At that point even today, there are huge piles of ash, now covered in grass, probably some fifty feet high.

In Seattle, and in Gig Harbor, where I lived and spent the whole day glued to local TV coverage, there were no obvious signs of the eruption--there was no ash and the eruption could not be seen. Along with everyone else in the state, we rushed to the store to get our masks to survive future eruptions that might send ash our way. That never happened. We got some apparent very light dustings of ash on some plants later that year, but nothing obvious, and it might just have been regular dust that we noticed because we were looking for it.

Later that year or the next, there was another eruption on a clear summer day, and I remember going to the top of the hill in Gig Harbor to see the plume, way off in the distance, for a mountain that could only be seen because of the contrast created by the plume.

But, the experience for someone in Seattle was one of watching TV and reading huge stories in local newspapers, grabbing surgical masks as preparation for future eruptions, talking a lot about it in school (and I presume for adults, at work). Beyond that, it wasn't particularly disruptive.

If you want your character to be more directly influenced by the eruption, Portland would be a better setting than Seattle.

Also, as for the current cluster of earthquakes at the volcano, I wouldn't worry. In the past, this is the kind of activity associated with dome-building and/or steam eruptions. There were dozens of those after the big eruption in 1980, and their effect was limited to the immediate area near or in the crater. One would have to walk on the trail along the rim to be at any danger, and those trails are currently closed. You're better off worrying about the upcoming annual windstorms in Seattle.

Now, if the earthquakes continue and get bigger and more frequent, and instruments start detecting a buildup of pressure that isn't being relieved through the crater and results in swelling on the scale of hundreds of feet, THEN you can start to worry.

Re: A couple of things

[annathepiper]

Ah, you don't understand--the eruption was only a passing blip in my character's childhood, something that I wanted to mention as a small background detail in a couple of paragraphs that explain her backstory. It's no big impact on her as an adult, just a bit of local color I added in. It's not relevant to the main story.

But thanks for the details, anyway! It's nice to know this stuff. :)