Original subtitles

(rumbling)

Narrator: An unforgettable day in america's history.

Officer: We had a major eruption occurring at 8:32

Approximately this morning on mount st. Helens.

Man: The top of the mountain seems to have been blown away.

Man: This was a game changer.

Narrator: The eruption of mount st. Helens

Was the first of its kind ever filmed.

The volcano unleashed four super-sized cataclysms.

First, the world's largest landslide ever recorded.

Then, an explosion equivalent to 500 hiroshima bombs.

Man: It was like you were being cremated alive.

Narrator: Lethal mudflows.

Sheriff: Get off the bridge! (whistles)

Come on! Get over here!

Narrator: And enough ash to cover 12 states.

(thud)

40 years on, digitally remastered archive,

Eyewitness accounts, and animated photographs

Reveal why this was the usa's deadliest volcano.

Man: I really believed I had no chance of living through this.

♪ ♪

Narrator: Welcome to mount st. Helens, before 1980.

Announcer: A haven for recreational activities

And youth camps.

A place as close to heaven as one could get.

Narrator: The snow-capped giant

Had slumbered for over a century,

But that was about to change.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Anchorman: There are rumblings of something big

About to happen in washington state.

Narrator: Deep beneath the northwest corner of the u.S.,

The giant was slowly waking.

Reporter: An earthquake hitting 4.3 on the richter scale

Shook the mountain.

Reporter: The volcano is spewing a steady stream

Of ash, smoke, and steam.

Reporter: And experts say a major explosion is overdue.

Narrator: The question was,

When would the big eruption arrive?

Don swanson, a volcanologist

With the u.S. Geological survey,

Was sent in to assess the danger.

Don swanson: We're really sort of fumbling

As to exactly what this means.

You could see that there were cracks surrounding the crater,

Where the summit had collapsed.

The top of the volcano was a very unstable place,

And it was breaking up.

Narrator: Mount st. Helens had erupted before.

It lies on one of the earth's most geologically active zones.

Announcer: A huge linear fault system

Melts millions of tons of rock.

Announcer: Every so often, magma rises up into the mountain,

And the mountain is ready to erupt.

Narrator: Within a day of the first sign of ash,

Scientists were monitoring the volcano around the clock.

A state of emergency was declared.

Dixy lee ray: Don't go to mount st. Helens.

Don't try to get as close to the mountain as possible.

Reporter: Roadblocks have been set up.

The public is prohibited from entering.

Woman: How would you feel?

We're paying taxes, and we'd like to use our property.

I'm not afraid!

Narrator: Deputy sheriff george barker was on duty.

George barker: Right now people are coming in at their own risk,

And they're signing in and out at this checkpoint.

I was a brand-new deputy, and now all of a sudden

They were talking about eruption and poison gases

And lava and this kind of thing.

It was all unknown, and it was like, wow,

A real adventure.

Narrator: Authorities marked out a restriction zone

And evacuated hundreds of people.

Man: You're gonna have to go, and the faster, the better.

One time, you gotta go!

Narrator: But one resident wouldn't budge--harry truman.

He lived at spirit lake, inside the restriction zone.

Harry truman: Spirit lake and mount st. Helens is my life.

Folks, I've lived there 50 years.

It's a part of me.

Barker: Truman thought, this is gonna be lava

Coming rolling down the side of the mountain.

You simply run away from it, you drive away from it.

Truman: I'll get in my yacht

And get out on the lake,

Get away from that lava

If it ever comes down this far, yeah.

Narrator: Most of the world's volcanoes erupt upwards,

Out of the top.

But instead, mount st. Helens would erupt

In a way rarely witnessed before.

♪ ♪

On the north face, geologists noticed an ominous bulge.

In a matter of weeks, it would expand by 450 feet.

Swanson: These changes were unprecedented.

There was more and more magma intruding into the volcano

And pushing the north side outward.

It was a really hectic time.

Narrator: Don's team included a young geologist

Called david johnston.

David johnston: Its historic eruptions

Have been very explosive.

The initial phases would produce ashfall

All over southwestern washington.

Narrator: David would monitor the bulge

From a ridge called south coldwater.

Swanson: We were hoping that our monitoring

Would show an increase in rate of the bulge movement

Or something that we could use to say

That the volcano was really building up to a culmination,

But we never saw that.

Narrator: For five weeks,

The volcano intermittently rumbled

And spewed gases and ash.

Reporter: As scientists fumble for the truth,

Everyone else is fumbling to get in on the act

And make a fast buck.

♪ what kind of volcano merely burps up ash? ♪

♪ we want lava, we want lava ♪

♪ bubby dooby dooday ♪

Reporter: It draws people of all sorts.

They come filled with wonder.

Man: That was just unbelievable!

Man: I wanna see it blow.

(laughs) it'd be great.

Reporter: Sightseers crowded remote logging roads for a view.

Those who tried hard enough could always find a way in.

Narrator: The eruption would arrive with little warning

And reach far beyond the restriction zone.

(airplane engine starts)

Geologist dorothy stoffel headed into the sky,

Towards mount st. Helens.

Dorothy stoffel: It was just a beautiful day.

It was so serene.

Narrator: She'd been granted permission

To photograph the volcano from the air.

Stoffel: I thought, it's become dormant again,

And we missed all the activity.

But on the north side of the mountain,

We could see water from melting snow and ice,

As though the mountain was weeping on the north side.

We just had no sense of anything going to happen.

Narrator: The meltwater had fast-tracked the volcano

To its deadly destiny.

♪ ♪

On the ground, 7,000 feet below dorothy,

A student, catherine hickson,

And her husband had been camping.

Catherine hickson: We just had this beautiful panoramic view

Of the volcano.

Really not much was going on.

The volcano was very quiet,

But the dogs acted very strangely.

You often hear about how animals react

Prior to either an earthquake or an eruption or whatnot.

Narrator: Catherine and her husband

Were nine miles to the east of the volcano.

Resident harry truman was at his home on spirit lake.

David johnston monitored the bulge

From south coldwater ridge.

David and catherine were

Outside the restriction zone.

Harry was inside it.

The u.S. Geological survey in washington state.

Swanson: Suddenly the seismographs went bonkers.

The needles just started jumping all over the place.

Narrator: An earthquake hitting 5.1 on the richter scale

Ripped through the volcano's core.

Swanson: I'm not sure I've ever been so excited before.

Narrator: The quake set off a chain of life-changing events,

All of them unstoppable.

The volcanic monster had woken.

Making one last pass in her plane,

Dorothy photographed the first moments of disaster.

♪ ♪

Stoffel: Nothing is happening, and then all of a sudden,

The ice began to fall into the summit.

And I got so excited.

Narrator: But dorothy was right above a volcano

About to unleash its first cataclysm.

Stoffel: The instant that I took that second picture,

The most bizarre thing happened.

We could see this fracture opening up.

Narrator: She photographed the moment of collapse.

Meltwater had penetrated the north face,

Helping to destabilize the bulge.

Stoffel: The whole north side of the mountain,

It became almost fluid,

Like someone was slicing the mountain in half.

Narrator: Catherine hickson's husband also took pictures.

They reveal the start of the largest recorded landslide

On earth.

Hickson: The landslide was an amazing event.

The mountain is disintegrating and is moving.

It was like watching, on a grand scale,

This giant wave.

Essentially the mountain falling apart before our eyes.

Narrator: 3.3 billion cubic yards of rock and ice

Hurtled down the volcano.

Stoffel: You expect mountains to erupt.

You don't expect mountains to fall apart.

Narrator: The landslide triggered

Something far more powerful.

Stoffel: I thought we were dead.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Narrator: An explosion burst out of the north face.

♪ ♪

Stoffel: I was looking directly down on the blast coming up.

I really thought we were going to be blown apart.

Narrator: Photographers captured the instantaneous

Pressure release of the magma.

Water inside the volcano flashed to steam.

More than a thousandfold increase in volume,

Catapulting the eruption into a massive explosion.

Hickson: We just saw this writhing, boiling cloud,

Blacks and grays just shooting out to the north.

Narrator: Scientists call it a pyroclastic surge--

A blast of rock, ice, and gas

Superheated up to 660 degrees fahrenheit,

Accelerating to speeds over 600 miles per hour.

Hickson: This eruption was getting

Bigger and bigger and bigger,

Faster and faster than anything that I could have anticipated.

Narrator: The blast threatened to engulf dorothy's plane.

Stoffel: The pilot put our airplane into a nosedive

To try to outrun the blast.

I can't emphasize enough how quickly the blast developed

Into enormous proportions.

I thought, "we're going to disappear from this earth,

And my mother's never gonna know what happened to me."

Narrator: The blast was visible to climbers

On peaks over 30 miles away,

An explosion equivalent to 500 hiroshima bombs.

The pilot's maneuver saved their lives.

Stoffel: The whole experience was very eerie and strange.

It was a sense of awe, wonderment.

It was amazing that so much earth could be destroyed

In such a brief instant.

Narrator: Two catastrophic events were in motion.

One, the massive landslide

Traveled over 100 miles an hour,

Eventually spilling 14 miles down the toutle valley.

And two, the pyroclastic surge.

In two minutes, it covered almost seven miles,

Destroying spirit lake

And engulfing south coldwater ridge.

Harry truman was killed,

Buried beneath 150 feet of debris.

A similar fate for david johnston

At his monitoring post.

Swanson: It really hit home hard

That we'd lost a colleague and a friend,

And, and that's when, that's when the tears began.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Narrator: The size and direction of the eruption

Made it much more destructive than predicted.

Mount st. Helens had exploded sideways,

The first lateral blast ever recorded in real time.

In their car, catherine, her husband, and their dogs

Were trying to outrun the growing blast.

Hickson: I was looking backwards,

Basically seeing this incredible cloud

Just moving much faster than we were, in fact, moving.

It was the most terrifying moments of the entire eruption.

I knew it would be hot,

It would potentially suffocate us,

And that would be the end.

Narrator: And for some, it was.

Narrator: Catherine and her husband

Were far enough east of the volcano

To escape with their lives.

Hickson: It was a feeling of incredible relief,

But also incredible wonder.

Like, what we had witnessed was truly phenomenal.

Narrator: The pyroclastic surge was spreading north,

Far beyond the restriction zone.

♪ ♪

Minutes before the eruption,

Logger jim scymanky felled trees with two co-workers,

While another logger, jose dias,

Rested in a nearby truck.

Jim scymanky: A beautiful morning, gorgeous.

We didn't hear too much wildlife, though.

Narrator: Jim was over 12 miles from the volcano,

Outside the restriction zone.

He had no idea that he was about to get caught

In a blast hurtling towards him.

(boom)

(beeping)

(boom)

Scymanky: As we were working,

We heard somebody screaming and yelling.

The next thing we saw was jose dias

Come running down through the woods, screaming,

"the volcano's exploding!"

(screaming)

We couldn't believe it. We didn't hear anything.

And then I turned back around,

And that's when I heard this huge roaring sound

Coming through the woods.

Narrator: Approaching them, the superheated pyroclastic surge.

Scymanky: It sounded like freight trains coming through.

It was just a huge roar.

You couldn't hear anything. Deafening.

Unbelievable.

And this thing was so fast, it just overtook you in seconds.

Narrator: The blast hit the four loggers.

Scymanky: It just turned pitch-black.

Narrator: They were smothered by superheated gases and ash.

Scymanky: We were being pummeled with god knows what.

It was like you were being cremated alive.

You know, the pain was just unreal.

Narrator: Deadly quantities of pulverized rock

Clogged his airways.

Scymanky: You couldn't breathe.

Trying to take a breath (inhales)

Nothing, zero oxygen.

I knew I was gonna die right there.

Narrator: The blast fanned north, east, and west

For up to 19 miles,

Scorching and flattening everything it touched.

Barely four minutes into the eruption,

It's estimated the volcano had taken more than 40 lives,

Some of the first recorded fatalities from a volcano

In the continental u.S.

At the same time, a young news cameraman, david crockett,

Was making his getaway by car

Five miles west of the mountain.

He was about to get trapped

By the volcano's third catastrophe--

Deadly mudflows known as lahars.

(rumbling)

David crockett: I thought, oh, here we go,

It's just a normal eruption again,

And I'll have my footage in 15 minutes

And be back home by lunch.

I was not expecting what happened, absolutely not.

Right in front of me, there was just this explosion

Of mud and trees and rocks.

I had no place to drive.

Narrator: He started filming.

Heat from the eruption

Had melted mount st. Helens' ice cap,

Unleashing billions of gallons of water from the summit,

Creating lethal lahars,

Thick with volcanic debris and ash.

David needed to escape to higher ground.

Crockett: I knew I had to try to wade

Across this flow in front of me.

Grabbed my camera. I had no choice.

I waded into it about thigh deep.

Felt like warm concrete.

I still have trouble believing I made it across that, but I did.

Narrator: But above him, another danger loomed--

A plume of rock and ash.

Crockett: It was just incredible.

It was hard to make sense out of the scale of it.

This enormous cloud just blocking out the sky,

Just full of purples and blacks and greens

And lightning everywhere.

Narrator: Miles high and growing.

Crockett: It was just hard to wrap my mind around.

It was awesomely beautiful

And awesomely scary at the same time.

Narrator: But the ash was falling,

Bringing a suffocating darkness.

Crockett: The valley was literally

Disappearing behind me.

Narrator: The volcano's fourth cataclysm was coming.

Narrator: Within half an hour of the blast,

The fourth cataclysm-- a menacing cloud of ash.

(phone rings)

Crockett: This is dave from the comms center.

Man: Hello, dave.

Crockett: Have you had a chance to look out your windows yet?

Man: No, not really.

Crockett: We got about a 40,000-foot cloud

Above the top of the mountain

And filling the entire county and sky.

Narrator: The column of destruction poured upwards,

More than 12 miles high.

Barker: This disaster got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Officer: We had a major eruption occurring at 8:32

Approximately this morning on mount st. Helens.

Barker: It kept escalating as to how many

Different agencies needed to respond.

Narrator: Deputy george barker's task was to head out

And warn of the approaching mudflows.

Barker: A sergeant came on the air and said,

"I'm gonna say it plainly,

But there's gonna be a lot of deaths."

I realized, it's pretty serious.

Newscaster: The news this morning is of human beings

Trying to comprehend what nature is doing to them.

We're not used to volcanoes in this country.

Reporter: It's a frightening tale of survival in a nightmare.

♪ ♪

Crockett: Dear god, this is hell on earth I'm walking through.

Aw, god!

Narrator: News cameraman david crockett

Filmed his terrifying experience

From deep within the ash cloud.

Crockett: I can hear the mountain behind me rumbling.

I feel the ash now in my eyes.

It's getting very hard to breathe.

It's the strangest feeling.

I really believed I had no chance of living through this.

Narrator: Fine ash particles were slowly asphyxiating him.

Crockett: Oh, dear god!

It was in my nose. It was in my mouth.

Oh, god, if I can just keep walking.

If there's more air to breathe.

There were constant earthquakes.

The ground was moving the whole time.

Just about every sensory experience you could,

You could feel was going on.

(coughing)

I didn't realize how badly I wanted to live.

Narrator: The forestry service sent in a plane

To assess the destruction.

Volcanologist don swanson seized the chance

To film the eruption from the air.

Swanson: Being able to see it up close

Was really quite an emotional experience for me

Because here it was happening right in, right in front of me.

Narrator: His footage reveals the twisting helix

Of gas, rock, and ash.

Swanson: It looked like the head of a cauliflower,

But much more ominous and much dirtier.

It was just frustrating that we couldn't get closer.

Narrator: Through the ash,

He glimpsed what was left of mount st. Helens.

Swanson: I said to myself,

"oh, no, this can't have happened."

The top of the mountain was gone.

Narrator: The blast had obliterated 1,300 feet

Of rock and ice from the summit.

The column of ash rose out of a crater over a mile wide.

Swanson: That destruction amazed and shocked me.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Narrator: The ash spread.

Day became night.

Reporter: In yakima, washington, this morning,

85 miles north of mount st. Helens,

It was like midnight.

Streetlights came on automatically,

And many cars stalled when the ash clogged carburetors.

Narrator: Downwind of the volcano,

In the town of ephrata, townsfolk stopped and stared.

What appeared to be an approaching storm

Was the expanding ash cloud,

Already 140 miles from the volcano.

Somehow, logger jim scymanky and his co-workers

Had survived.

Scymanky: I looked at them, and I thought, "oh, my god.

They look horrible."

My clothes were welded to me basically.

My gloves were welded to my hands,

And we were in so much pain.

I was wondering, "god, I wonder how long it takes to die."

Narrator: They walked for miles in search of help.

Scymanky: The landscape was gone.

You had no bearing.

Narrator: This is all that remained of the forest

Where jim had worked, just 90 minutes earlier.

Scymanky: Everything was just smoldering and down.

Just us and the devastation.

Narrator: A few miles away, the ash had cleared

And david crockett could breathe once again.

Crockett: I had my still camera, and I just, click, I made it!

I think you can see a pretty big smile on my face.

That's the first moment I thought,

"hey, I might make it out of here alive.

This is amazing!"

Narrator: But the eruption was reaching a new violent phase,

And the muddy lahars were wreaking havoc

In the valleys below.

Narrator: Nearly four hours after the blast,

The eruption was in full flow.

Lava blocks and pumice spewed out from the crater,

Heaping yet more devastation

Onto the north side of the volcano.

The lahars roared down the mountain,

Gathering pace and power.

Man on radio: All units, toutle area,

Have report of a mudflow three-quarters of a mile

To one mile wide coming down the toutle.

Narrator: A 20-foot-high wall of water

Carried a lethal load of sediment and logs.

Jim scymanky witnessed this rare force of nature

In the valley below him.

Scymanky: Just unbelievable!

It had trailers in it.

It had heavy equipment like bulldozers.

It had parts of houses, trees, huge trees,

And just rolling, slow roll.

It was just engulfing everything.

Narrator: Downstream,

It threatened bridges and highways,

Vital escape routes away from the volcano.

(crash)

Man: Woo!

Sheriff: Get off the bridge! (whistles)

Come on! Get over here!

Narrator: Deputy george barker saw the lahars

Approach the toutle bridge.

Barker: Bob is screaming on the radio,

"clear the bridges!

Clear the bridges!"

I saw that bridge go out.

It was a big span, and it went down pretty relatively quick.

Truthfully, I was very afraid of what was happening,

For my own sake.

Narrator: For hours, the lahars funneled down

Both forks of the toutle river,

Putting a dozen bridges out of action.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The scale of destruction was beyond the scope

Of the local counties.

Man on radio: We're gonna have a real problem down below,

That's all I can say right now.

Narrator: The national guard was called up...

Including pilot jess hagerman...

And darald stebner, a vietnam veteran.

Stebner and hagerman's task

Was to fly into the blast zone...

Pilot: Oh, that's some hot ground, boy, and on. Gee!

Narrator: ...And search for survivors.

Jess hagerman: We didn't know in those days

What this thing was all about,

And we didn't have a clue of where we were going

Or what we were gonna find.

Narrator: They had to fly toward the erupting volcano.

Darald stebner: "this is scarier than vietnam," I said,

"because there's no place we can go with this thing."

You don't know if that thing's gonna erupt again.

And the eruption has a much more severe consequence

Than an ak-47 round.

Hagerman: It was unbelievable, the power of this cloud.

And you're flying around in this little bitty helicopter,

And you think, like, it's like a gnat in the universe.

Narrator: Beneath them,

A colorless, lifeless landscape.

Hagerman: The sky, the ground, everything was the same color.

It was all covered with ash.

Stebner: I'm stumbling for words now. I was then, too.

It was just that it was so overwhelming,

Where does one start?

Narrator: No trees were left standing.

Hagerman: It just looked like somebody had taken

A great big giant comb and just combed 'em down.

All the trees were laying in the same direction.

Stebner: You just can't believe what you're looking at.

Pilot: Nothing matches the map.

Narrator: Landmarks had been obliterated.

Pilot: Where's spirit lake? Is that it over there?

Doesn't look like any place I've ever been before.

Narrator: Lost within the devastation,

The volcano's victims.

Stebner: How could anybody survive the initial blast

With what it did to those trees?

Narrator: About eight hours in, a lahar was reaching its peak

20 miles down the toutle valley,

Where photographers captured an astonishing act of bravery.

Two brothers, robert and john brown,

Attempted to free some horses.

Robert brown: They had just as much a right to live as we did.

We gave it a shot.

Narrator: For half an hour, they fought to drive them

Over a railroad track to dry land,

But nature proved too powerful.

Brown: I looked up, and I saw a wave of mud coming at us.

Narrator: Another surge approached.

Brown: We were between a rock and a hard spot.

John, he just passed out right there on the spot,

From just exhaustion.

We had to give up on the horses.

Narrator: On the mountain, a glimmer of hope--footprints.

Hagerman: Naturally, you're excited

Because somebody's alive out here,

And we're gonna find somebody.

♪ ♪

Hagerman: All of a sudden, we see two guys laying on the road.

Scymanky: They came out of nowhere,

And they were hovering right above us.

Narrator: Jim scymanky and one other logger

Collapsed in the ashy wasteland.

Scymanky: I think I waved my arm up or something, you know,

I had some strength left.

Narrator: But landing a chopper in deep ash risked a collision.

Scymanky: The ash was so deep,

It would just blow it everywhere,

And you couldn't even see the helicopter.

You couldn't see anything.

Hagerman: It just completely engulfed you.

Just before you land,

Three or four feet before you hit the ground,

You can see the ground.

Narrator: At the fringe of the blast zone,

Logger jim had barely survived.

Reporter: The men caught on mount st. Helens this morning

Are now at emanuel hospital,

Severely burned by hot gases and ash.

Scymanky: But we'd been out there for seven hours.

That's a long, long time.

Oh, the doctor said it was a miracle.

Narrator: Inside the blast zone,

Darald stebner was still searching.

Stebner: We saw this large log up ahead of us there,

And there was somebody moving on it.

And my gosh, we got a closer look,

And there was a gentleman sitting up on this felled tree.

Narrator: Logger jose dias.

Stebner: He was hunched down. He was hurting.

I think he just felt totally exhausted.

Narrator: Another rescue team noticed a distress signal.

Three small fires led them to cameraman david crockett.

Crockett: It is so arrogant, but I felt like,

Oh, this is all part of a day's work.

That's what it felt like at the time.

Looking back now,

At the people who risked their lives to save me, um...

I, of course, feel a lot differently.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Narrator: Mount st. Helens had done its worst.

The volcano had ejected 540 million tons of ash.

Reporter: In parts of washington and montana,

It lies on the ground seven inches deep.

Narrator: The after-effects would last for months.

Reporter: Law enforcement agencies

Have one word of advice--

Don't drive, don't leave home, don't leave animals outside,

And above all, don't panic.

(horn honks)

(thud)

Narrator: The ash spread across 12 states.

Reporter: The plume of volcanic ash has now been reported

As far east as north dakota,

And fallout could reach new England

In two or three days.

Narrator: It circled the globe numerous times.

Closer to home, the volcano had rearranged a whole landscape...

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

...And transformed spirit lake into a steaming cauldron.

Swanson: Even a relatively small volcano like mount st. Helens,

Look what it did!

Narrator: 200 homes gone,

200 miles of highway and rail destroyed,

Wildlife and livestock wiped out

By the hundreds of thousands,

And forests in a 230-square-mile area

Snapped like twigs.

The eruption killed 57 people, including logger jose dias,

Who later died from his injuries.

But out of this devastation, over 130 people were rescued.

Hagerman: Hey!

(laughs)

Jim scymanky!

How you doing?

Scymanky: I'm doing fine, thank you.

Hagerman: Hey, good to see ya. Scymanky: It's good to see you.

Hagerman: It's always a wonderful feeling,

Probably the greatest feeling you can have,

To know that you probably helped somebody live.

You're looking good!

Scymanky: Still here.

Hagerman: Still upright.

Scymanky: I'm still upright, yeah.

Hagerman: Me, too!

Scymanky: I didn't know jess, but, you know,

Great human being, I know that.

Wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here today talking, so.

Crockett: If I had it to do all over again,

I would definitely go back.

It was just the most incredible experience

I've ever lived through.

Stoffel: We weren't sure that we were going to make it

Out of that situation at all.

For months, I really grappled with the issue

That I was still alive,

And I told myself

That I wouldn't take life for granted again.

Brown: You realize how small you are,

In the universe, in the planet.

I do my best just to enjoy life.

Hickson: The effect was life-changing.

I've chosen volcanology as a career path.

Here was an event that had almost killed me

And really, it inspired me to learn more

About what had happened at mount st. Helens.

I'm thankful to be alive.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Narrator: The 1980 eruption of mount st. Helens

Ushered in a new era of volcanology.

For the first time, hundreds of images revealed

The full force of the cataclysms

That snow-capped volcanoes can unleash.

Swanson: I don't think in any other eruption

Has photography been so important,

Because we didn't have to imagine.

You can look at the photographs and see them.

Narrator: Since 1980, mount st. Helens

Has grown a new magma dome.

And in the same mountain range in the pacific northwest,

There are about a dozen more active snow-capped giants.

The tallest is mount rainier.

Hickson: Because it is very high,

Has a lot of ice and snow on it,

Mount rainier will be incredibly dangerous when it erupts.

Narrator: There's no certainty

About when any of these volcanoes will next stir.

But for the tens of thousands of people

Living in the valleys below,

The effects will be catastrophic.

Swanson: We volcanologists need to continually remind the public

That these volcanoes will erupt again in the future.

Captioned by side door media services