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BOOM
One of my little guilty pleasures is going to be airing this weekend on Sci-Fi Channel: Dante's Peak.
*Silly* little movie about a volcano in the Cascades going *foomp*. The lava scenes are pretty poorly done[1], and the whole bit about the lake turning to acid was rather laughable. So why on earth was I the person in our group that went to see it in the theatres not laughing?
Because I remember Mt. St. Helens.
I lived in Wenatchee, WA at the time, on the north face of a steep and deep valley. The ash cloud from St. Helens went up 80,000 feet... then fell over across the state like a felled column. I remember being 9 years old, and watching this oily, black cloud *fill* the valley from over the southern edge like an evil dirty wave. It almost looked liquid. The leading edge actually curled back on itself when it hit below our house... and then kept coming. That is the first time, to my memory, that the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
The radio reports that morning had been telling us all not to go outside, and that the composition of the ash cloud was unknown. We taped up the doors, and air vents to the house, I recall, and when the cloud came closer, my Dad said "Alright everyone, let's get to the basement." There we taped *that* door as well.
No one knew what the cloud would do to the newly forming crops... the entire region is dependent on agriculture for its economy, and it wasn't a large stretch to imagine the crops being poisoned or smothered by the ash.
It was a truly frightening time... but incredibly exciting.
We were downstairs for a couple of hours, and we came back up... the sun was gone. It was almost pitch black, but with the amount of light that was left, we could see that it looked like a moonscape. Oh, the trees were all still there, but they more resembled cobweb covered dead sticks than the fresh budding apple trees that had been there just that morning, and the grass was flat under about an inch of ash. (Ash is almost a misnomer - it is *dirt*, plain and simple. It's not as light and fluffy as 'ash' connotates. Imagine a fine talcum powder dust made of rock, and you have the idea. A pinch is lightweight - a solid inch of it on every square inch is heavy.)
Then the images starting coming in from the Toutle River and areas surrounding Mt. St. Helens. We saw Spirit Lake reduced to a boiling mud cauldron choked with 150 year old dead trees. We saw a wave of mud move down the Toutle and wipe out a bridge... with the house it was carrying. It was destruction on a scale few had ever seen, and we had 200 level seats. Close enough to get the aftereffects, but far away enough to escape the direct blast. Scientists proclaimed that it would take decades, or centuries, for life to come back to the area like it had been - the temperature had sterilized the soil for a significant depth.
Of course, as it turned out, the ash was not only an incredibly rich fertilizer, with bumper crops for the next few years, but also a major tourism source as it was made into glasses and ceramic glazes. The area around the mountain has recovered much faster than the experts predicted (never underestimate life), and the actual death toll in the end was amazingly low for such a definitive explosion in a fairly well populated area.
To get back to the movie, the one thing that they did do extremely well was, of course, the ash clouds. The pyroclastic flows depicted in the film are *quite* realistic, and pinpoint memories from a frightening time of my childhood. It is obvious that the production crew relied heavily on the St. Helens blast footage for their inspiration as well - many scenes are close copies of events depicted in the news reports.
So while it's a really fairly poor movie, in most regards, I get a little thrill every time I see the ash clouds racing into the town, knowing that I saw something similar in person, and that the fears of childhood have been made flesh in celluloid.
And that is what movies should do - transport you in time and place, either within the vision of your own memories, or within the framework of their cinematic vision. On that level, for me personally, the movie is a success.
Even if it is silly.
[1] Not the effects - the fact that there *is* lava. The Cascades tend more towards the dome-and-steam variety than the Hawaii chain lava spewers.
*Silly* little movie about a volcano in the Cascades going *foomp*. The lava scenes are pretty poorly done[1], and the whole bit about the lake turning to acid was rather laughable. So why on earth was I the person in our group that went to see it in the theatres not laughing?
Because I remember Mt. St. Helens.
I lived in Wenatchee, WA at the time, on the north face of a steep and deep valley. The ash cloud from St. Helens went up 80,000 feet... then fell over across the state like a felled column. I remember being 9 years old, and watching this oily, black cloud *fill* the valley from over the southern edge like an evil dirty wave. It almost looked liquid. The leading edge actually curled back on itself when it hit below our house... and then kept coming. That is the first time, to my memory, that the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
The radio reports that morning had been telling us all not to go outside, and that the composition of the ash cloud was unknown. We taped up the doors, and air vents to the house, I recall, and when the cloud came closer, my Dad said "Alright everyone, let's get to the basement." There we taped *that* door as well.
No one knew what the cloud would do to the newly forming crops... the entire region is dependent on agriculture for its economy, and it wasn't a large stretch to imagine the crops being poisoned or smothered by the ash.
It was a truly frightening time... but incredibly exciting.
We were downstairs for a couple of hours, and we came back up... the sun was gone. It was almost pitch black, but with the amount of light that was left, we could see that it looked like a moonscape. Oh, the trees were all still there, but they more resembled cobweb covered dead sticks than the fresh budding apple trees that had been there just that morning, and the grass was flat under about an inch of ash. (Ash is almost a misnomer - it is *dirt*, plain and simple. It's not as light and fluffy as 'ash' connotates. Imagine a fine talcum powder dust made of rock, and you have the idea. A pinch is lightweight - a solid inch of it on every square inch is heavy.)
Then the images starting coming in from the Toutle River and areas surrounding Mt. St. Helens. We saw Spirit Lake reduced to a boiling mud cauldron choked with 150 year old dead trees. We saw a wave of mud move down the Toutle and wipe out a bridge... with the house it was carrying. It was destruction on a scale few had ever seen, and we had 200 level seats. Close enough to get the aftereffects, but far away enough to escape the direct blast. Scientists proclaimed that it would take decades, or centuries, for life to come back to the area like it had been - the temperature had sterilized the soil for a significant depth.
Of course, as it turned out, the ash was not only an incredibly rich fertilizer, with bumper crops for the next few years, but also a major tourism source as it was made into glasses and ceramic glazes. The area around the mountain has recovered much faster than the experts predicted (never underestimate life), and the actual death toll in the end was amazingly low for such a definitive explosion in a fairly well populated area.
To get back to the movie, the one thing that they did do extremely well was, of course, the ash clouds. The pyroclastic flows depicted in the film are *quite* realistic, and pinpoint memories from a frightening time of my childhood. It is obvious that the production crew relied heavily on the St. Helens blast footage for their inspiration as well - many scenes are close copies of events depicted in the news reports.
So while it's a really fairly poor movie, in most regards, I get a little thrill every time I see the ash clouds racing into the town, knowing that I saw something similar in person, and that the fears of childhood have been made flesh in celluloid.
And that is what movies should do - transport you in time and place, either within the vision of your own memories, or within the framework of their cinematic vision. On that level, for me personally, the movie is a success.
Even if it is silly.
[1] Not the effects - the fact that there *is* lava. The Cascades tend more towards the dome-and-steam variety than the Hawaii chain lava spewers.
I've visited St. Helens twice in the last month.
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.
Re: I've visited St. Helens twice in the last month.
I think it was just a case of being in the right place at the right time to end up with that visual image in my head.