Mount St.

Helens
Mount St. Helens is an active volcano located in Skamania City,
Washington in the United States. It
was named Mount St. Helens from
a British diplomat Lord St. Helens,
a friend of an explorer who made a
survey of the area in the late 18th
century. It is 96 miles south of
Seattle, Washington and 50 miles
northeast of Portland, Oregon. The
tectonic plates that make up Mount
St. Helens are the Pacific Plate,
North American Plate, and the tiny Juan de Fuca plate, an area
known as a triple plate junction. As with most other volcanoes in the
Cascade Range, Mount St. Helens is a large eruptive cone consisting
of lava rock interlayered with ash and other deposits.

Mt. St. Helens had remained dormant for 123 years. In March of
1980 scientists recorded seismic tremors from the mountain and on
the 18 th of May 1980, Mount St. Helens
erupted. The explosion blew off 1,300
feet of the mountain's top and sent ash
and debris more than 12 miles into the
sky covering three states - Washington,
Oregon, and Idaho.

Sixty two people were dead, forests and

lakes were destroyed resulting in $3 billion worth of damage. If the
eruption occurred one day later, when loggers would have been at
work, rather than on a Sunday, the death toll would almost certainly
have been much higher. 83-year-old Harry R. Truman, who had lived
near the mountain for 54 years, became famous when he decided
not to evacuate before the impending eruption, despite repeated
pleas by local authorities. His body was never found after the
eruption.

It was a typical spring day; however this typical day did not last
long. About 10:00 a.m. a black cloud covered the city in ash. The
ash was so heavy it sank swimming pool covers and caved in old
roofs. Businesses and schools were closed down as did all normal
activity in daily life; Yakima was hit like a snowstorm and it looked
like it from far away.

When the ash stopped falling down and the cloud clover lifted it
remained gray and dreary for days.
Everywhere you looked people wore
surgical masks (to stop from
breathing the ash in) and swept ash off their rooftops. The city was
a mess, but like any disaster life moves on and people cope. Yakima
only had huge amounts of ash and clean up, while the people and
the land near the mountain suffered death and destruction.

Between 1980 and 1986, activity continued at Mount St. Helens,

with a new lava dome forming in the crater. Numerous small
explosions and eruptions occurred. In 1982, President Ronald
Reagan and the U.S. Congress
established the Mount St. Helens
National Volcanic Monument, a
110,000 acres area around the
mountain. The 1980 eruption, the area
was left to gradually return to its
natural state. In 1987, the U.S. Forest
Service reopened the mountain to
climbing. It remained open until 2004
when renewed activity caused the
closure of the area around the mountain.