Mountain of Fire: Chapter 38–Epilogue

There was so much grief and trauma. Yet if the scientists let their emotions get in the way of learning from the volcano, then the missed opportunity—the chance to prevent harm to someone else in the future—would only add to the tragedy.

Mullineaux would later tell a Senate committee that “the lateral blast extended about three times farther than any such blast recorded by the geologic history of the volcano.”

“Their maps won’t work in the changed valleys,” Nole remembered. In the rain, cloud cover would add to their disorientation.

The bill that established the national monument and resulted in the Johnston Ridge Observatory not only set aside land but also charged the Forest Service to administer the area in a unique way....the Forest Service “shall manage the Monument to protect the geologic, ecologic, and cultural resources, in accordance with the provisions of this Act, allowing geologic forces and ecological succession to continue substantially unimpeded.”
They were going to leave the mountain alone.

Roger del Moral, another ecologist, remembered a hike he took only four months after the eruption: “… far from any visible vegetation, I discovered an isolated, yet active ant nest.”

When Charlie Crisafulli first saw the lake, he remembered that “the water was warm and bubbled with new hot springs. The once famously clear water turned to murk. If you put your fingers in … you couldn’t even see your fingertips. The whole area was gray and foul. It was putrid and smelled like rotten eggs.”

The phytoplankton, microscopic plants that float near the surface of water, had begun to remodel the lake into an environment that could once again sustain larger life.

“It has to be a lesson of resiliency,” Crisafulli said. “One, our expectation is most life—albeit if there’s just a few individuals—will persist. That’s the first. The second is if you just leave nature alone, the systems will come back in really remarkable ways.”

After decades of mixing with the soil underneath and becoming enriched by animal and plant decomposition, the ash and mud were finally able to support large plants.

However, the information from the satellites paired with instruments in other countries gave scientists enough of the story to help predict when and if tsunamis would arrive as well as a basic understanding of the extent of the damage.

“It’s like having a stethoscope on the volcano,” said Harold Tobin, Steve Malone’s successor at the University of Washington.

The initial landslide on the north slope of Mount St. Helens released pressure that had been building within the volcano, “uncorking” the mountain and giving an escape to the devastating blast.

The pattern of hummocks in the debris fields around Mount St. Helens after the eruption helped scientists to recognize the signs of landslides at other volcanoes.

The May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens showed the need for a wide range of professions—from emergency responders to infrastructure specialists (people who work with water and sewer systems, electrical grids, dams, and ports) to news media—to understand the impact of volcanoes within their area.

While this preparation often happens at a local level, the international Volcano Disaster Assistance Program was created as a direct result of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Led by the USGS, this coalition helps not only to monitor volcanoes around the world but also works to train local scientists and emergency responders to prepare for an eruption.