I have the same "there-is-no-flowing-lava-stupid" reaction to Dante's Peak. I have a "what-the-hell?" reaction to the acid lake. (BOILING lake, I'll buy. Acid??)
I don't have the same reaction to the pyroclastic flows. When it blew, I was also 9 years old. But I lived on the OTHER side of the mountain, in Vancouver. I felt the whump, I saw the news reports. We'd had a fine ashfall previously. I had watched the mountain steam and puff in the preceeding weeks. Then when it blew, I watched the cloud and the ash, and saw the reports from Wenatchee and Yakima and Toutle and Cougar, and was very glad I didn't live there. We got nothing from that particular eruption. The one that happened a few weeks later gave us about 1/2" of fine ash on everything, but aside from wearing medical masks for a while, things were normal. Oh, and the last day of 4th grade was cancelled.
I just realized that the picture I have of me in a drug store, carrying a blue medical mask, is more significant than just a childhood snapshot. Everyone was buying filters, and masks. We didn't know what would happen from all the ash either, we were just farther away.
I hadn't seen the mountain up close before it blew, and it's been 22 years since it did. The mountain is still scarred, and still barren in areas, but it's amazing all the life that's there. There are two whole new lakes. And I remember hearing Spirit Lake was gone, but there it is, 250" higher up, half as deep, and twice as wide.
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I've visited St. Helens twice in the last month.
Date: 2002-07-30 01:15 pm (UTC)I don't have the same reaction to the pyroclastic flows. When it blew, I was also 9 years old. But I lived on the OTHER side of the mountain, in Vancouver. I felt the whump, I saw the news reports. We'd had a fine ashfall previously. I had watched the mountain steam and puff in the preceeding weeks. Then when it blew, I watched the cloud and the ash, and saw the reports from Wenatchee and Yakima and Toutle and Cougar, and was very glad I didn't live there. We got nothing from that particular eruption. The one that happened a few weeks later gave us about 1/2" of fine ash on everything, but aside from wearing medical masks for a while, things were normal. Oh, and the last day of 4th grade was cancelled.
I just realized that the picture I have of me in a drug store, carrying a blue medical mask, is more significant than just a childhood snapshot. Everyone was buying filters, and masks. We didn't know what would happen from all the ash either, we were just farther away.
I hadn't seen the mountain up close before it blew, and it's been 22 years since it did. The mountain is still scarred, and still barren in areas, but it's amazing all the life that's there. There are two whole new lakes. And I remember hearing Spirit Lake was gone, but there it is, 250" higher up, half as deep, and twice as wide.