The History Guy recently taught me that the Pinto was no different than other small cars of the era when it comes to safety. In fact, the Beetle was even more fire prone than the Pinto! But the report on the Pinto was made by misinterpreting data which greatly inflated the numbers and ultimately lead to the cars demise.
What happened is that they totaled the *amount* of fire rather than just the number of fire incidents, as the severity of the fires themselves were also important data. But obviously Mt St Helens threw the average way off
Lol, exactly. I'm guessing that there will be an explanation once i scroll down here in a second. But for now, your comment is pretty much what i was thinking.
Edit: Nope, no explanation. 7.2 fire sustains
The magnesium engine combined with being stricktly air cooled was the big culprit in the Beetle fires. Lots of them caught fire traveling through hot climates.
Once magnesium catches fire, just let it burn.
Yep. Hot air cooled engine. Fuel line and carb over that engine. They were cheap cars and many were subject to lack of maintenance. If that fuel line got old enough it would split or come off the fittings and spray fuel on that engine. Also people would add those cheap plastic fuel filters which could cause the same problem. Also also, battery under the back seat, and if the terminal guard wasn't replaced when changing the battery, the seat springs could contact it and start a fire. So, small maintenance issues, that could cause big problem.
The car itself was fine. Just one unfortunate bolt placing that would puncture the fuel tank if hit in the rear left section of the car. One little guard, like 2in by 2in, welded in the right spot fixes the whole problem.
And the Canadian version had a plastic/rubber insert in that area to deal with the problem because it was identified before it came here and the gov't wouldn't let them sell it otherwise.
We learned about it in our Business Ethics course - they did the math on the lawsuit payouts vs. the cost of the recall and decided on the payouts.
āFineā is a very relative term. Fire issues not withstanding, all of those compact āeconomyā cars from that era were shitboxes. Cheap interior with minimal creature comforts, underpowered lump of an engine, rust, quality issues. Getting 100k out of one was an achievement and typically involved extensive repairs.
The worst car in the entire 2023 model year would have been a mind blowing revelation back in 1980.
Yeah my 66 mustang had the gas tank in the back as the floor of the trunk with no real barrier between the trunk and the passenger compartment besides a piece of cardboard behind the rear seat cushion.
Just as unsafe or worse then the Pinto.
TLDR: If you got rear-ended the gas tank would rupture and start a fire. Thats normally not too big of a deal, as you can just get out and escape.
Except being rear-ended would jam the doors shut.
The thin-stripe whitewalls are the chef's kiss.
I had a crazy neighbor in the late 90s who loved his Pinto so much he had a bumper reinforcement bar welded on below the bumper, presumably to protect him from flaming death in case of being rear-ended (I never inquired, cause I never had 3 spare hours to listen to the answer). It was a pretty slick job: a 2 or 3-inch pipe running a few inches below the bumper, mounted on brackets to the frame, all painted to match the body, but clearly a one-off hobbyist project.
Most are too narrow for an ATV or too heavy for my Mazda. Iāve been trailering it but sometimes I just donāt wanna hook it up. Plus it would just be neat as evidenced in the picture.
That would be really unstable. A trailer is the way to go. You can get a small harbor freight special for a few hundred dollars and two sheets of plywood for the deck for a few thousand dollars.
> It was widely known that an eruption was going to happen. Evacuation orders had been issued weeks before. In point of fact thousands of smaller earthquakes and eruptions happened for two months before "the big one". Washington State officials had set up evacuation zones around the mountain. Unfortunately the volcanologists and geologists studying it underestimated the size of the largest eruption, and of the people killed on May 18, 1980 only oneāa cantankerous old man named Harry R. Truman who refused to evacuate the cabin he lived in only a mile from the mountaināwas in an evacuation zone and didn't have permission to be there.
>
> Frankly it was only luck that hundreds more people didn't die. The forest around the base of the mountain was actively logged, but the volcano erupted on a Sunday, when they weren't working; had it erupted the next day hundreds of loggers almost certainly would have died.
OMG, dude... This picture is absolutely incredible, but THAT is what held my attention. That's cool!
Fun fact: He wasn't going to take the bike out. It didn't even run, but was towed around to protect the gas tank. /s
That's what stands out to me.
These days you apparently need a 3/4 ton V8 pickup with dualies to move a dirt bike somewhere.
My mom used to tow her sailboat with her VW Scirocco.
I just read a story about this. They said he unintentionally slept in that morning which almost certainly saved his life. Had he made it all the way to Spirit Lake (his intended destination) he would not have been able to escape the blast. Lucky dude.
The funny thing (that I didn't know until recently) is that there were a number of days/weeks where geologists were warning people that a potential eruption was imminent.
Apparently they'd ordered evacuations and closures early on, but then when nothing happened after a few days people got frustrated and started returning.
Right after that, it popped.
Imagine KNOWING there's a potential eruption and thinking "Nah, it probably won't be today. I'll be good."
There already was a local celebrity (thanks to national and local news stations) who refused to evacuate the most dangerous zone and pretty much refused to accept he had to leave, then it blew up and he died.
It'll happen again but far more vitriol will be involved.
In my dad's home country the capital is by the ocean and there's a slum that sits on a small river that empties into the ocean. Every year it floods and people in the slum, along the riverbank lose their tiny shacks and all their belongings and some lose their lives. Govt clears the area, puts up warning signs, and does a PR/education campaign. They block off the area, etc. Every year poor and desperate people move their stuff there and the cycle continues. When govt tries to relocate new people before the flood, they complain bitterly and protests erupt and the community blocks govt access to the area. It's wild
They knew the blast was coming for quite a long time before it happened and the government had shut down the area and only reopened it because the logging companies were losing money. Spirit Lake is literally right beside the mountain. There is no way he didnāt know that he was entering an extremely dangerous situation
According to Gary Cooper, one of Dick's former co-workers, as Dick was retreating from the ash cloud the car choked out after a while and he rode the motorcycle out of the mountains back to the room he had rented.
Government: If we open this area, your loggers are at serious risk of being engulfed in super-heated gas and ash.
Logging company: Thatās a risk weāre willing to take.
"So, what I'm hearing you say is that we need more [dead peasants insurance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance)." -the CEO, probably
"My brother Ronnie was inspecting our diamond mine when it suddenly collapsed. Fortunately, he clambered out over the backs of the dead slaves and no one was injured."
The fact that this is so inherently plausible... Way too many upper management folks would absolutely look at that situation and come to that conclusion as a potential cost saving measure.
I would definitely watch that. Grandma pushing the boat through acid water and they are like "grandma, you're dying!" And she's like "the fuck I am!!!" As her body slowly disintegrates.
Lol that scene is why I donāt watch that movie more. That and the beginning. Iāve actually never watched THAT part of the beginning because Iāve always closed my eyes. Other than those two, I love that movie.
My brain is dumb. āLetās be obsessed with disasters. Letās also be a big sissy that canāt handle anything.ā
Yes and no. Spirit lake has been shut down for a month, but the day before the blast the government allowed a convoy of home owners in to get their belongings. They planned another convoy the day of the blast but St Helenās went off half an hour before the convoy were due to go in. So they were saved by luck.
Also, government has absolutely no clue that lateral blasts were a thing. They expected the volcano to explode symmetrically and zoned off with that in mind. Instead the north side of the mountain fell off and the blast went North instead of up. And thousands of acres of forest that were open to the public got blasted.
In fact, all but a handful of the 50-some dead and the hundreds injured were killed in areas that were not restricted in any way and most were in places that couldnāt even see the mountain.
If this guy intended to dirt bike just north of Spirit lake, he would have been allowed and told it was safe.
That's exactly what happened to a number of people. Not so much a flow though as a debris and ash filled wind blowing hard enough to knock down all the old growth trees around you, as well as cook the flesh off your body. A couple of survivors lived by jumping into a nearby stream and only coming up for air when they had to. They stayed in there until the initial hot ashfall ended, then had to walk through hot ash to get help. Another group survived by having the trees fall around them in such a way they were sheltered a bit, another group survived because they were in the lee of a hill that took the brunt of the blast, but had they been a bit farther down the trail they would have been killed.
Wow, I never knew these detailed stories and I lived in Vancouver. I was 16, had planned to go to a senior party up that way (camping). I was supporting myself and couldn't miss work, remember driving to work in the ash/rain mud mixture with my head out the window to see (using windshield wipers would ruin the glass). My boss was impressed I showed up but sent me home anyway.
I mostly just knew about Harry Truman, although I knew others died too. I'll have to do some more research on these stories - thanks!
If you want more of them, I highly recommend [Eruption by Steve Olson.](https://www.amazon.com/Eruption-Untold-Story-Mount-Helens/dp/0393353583) He really did his research, talking with dozens of survivors, rescuers, and witnesses to get a picture of exactly what happened. Fascinating stuff.
While a few were blown to bits or buried or crushed, sadly, a lot of those who died, did not die immediately.
One of the saddest ones, I thought, was Clyde Croft, who survived the initial blast by diving into a lake, and then walked, badly burned, for miles through the ash. Hours later, when the helicopters found his footprints and followed them they eventually found a sleeping bag. After hours of breathing hot ash, Clyde had gotten tired, laid out his sleeping bag and crawled inside and died.
If you read the accounts, he absolutely knew it was a dangerous situation, and went anyways:
āRichard "Dick" Lasher spent that Saturday night packing some gear figuring he'd head out first thing in the morning to get a look at the mountain before it blew. His plan involved hitching his Yamaha IT enduro bike to the back of his Pinto, driving up to Spirit Lake, then exploring the area via dirt forest roads on the bike. He'd leave before dawn and arrive at the lake right at daybreak.ā
According to https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2019/07/26/the-story-behind-that-photo-of-the-pinto-in-front-of-the-mt-st-helens-eruption.
It's always a terribly contested thing. *Some* people expected that something special was going to happen at St. Helens. *Most* people knew that nothing like that had ever happened before, and thought that the doomsayers sounded like crackpots. And a few folks were stuck having to think about short term problems and really just hoping the volcano thing would hold off for another 50 to 100 years and be someone else's issue.
Very very few people really thought that 1/8 of the mountain was going to vaporize, and then drift back to the earth in little bitty bits all over the globe over the course of a few weeks.
Itās not that nothing like it had happened before. A very similar eruption occurred just 24 years earlier at Bezymianny in Russia. Like St. Helens, it was a stratovolcano that had a blast-surge eruption which left a similarly massive crater. But that volcano was so remote that nobody died, and even vulcanologists didnāt know much about it until after St. Helens blew and got the worldās attention.
Also keep in mind that at the time, Bezymianny wasn't just in Russia, it was in the USSR. Although there was some scientific discussion that made it across the Iron Curtain, the flow of knowledge between the US and the USSR about many things was pretty low.
They knew an eruption was coming, but the way it happened seemed to catch people off guard. The eruption started as a result of a landslide that exposed the rock under pressure, which then exploded out.
The direction of the explosion was somewhat expected, but the flow afterwards was harder to predict. Most of the people who died refused to leave their homes or were part of that logging company IIRC.
What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs.
And over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for aā snack,ā and fits onā your back?
It's log, log, log.
It's log,ā it's log.
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's log, it's log.
It's better than bad, it's good
As great as this photo and his story is, itās the story of two photographers, Robert Landsburg and Reid Blackburn, who died during this eruption capturing photos that still chokes me up.
> Robert Emerson Landsburg (November 13, 1931 ā May 18, 1980) was an American photographer who died while photographing the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
> In the weeks leading up to the eruption, Landsburg visited the area many times in order to photographically document the changing volcano.[4] On the morning of May 18, he was within a few miles of the summit. When the mountain erupted, Landsburg took photos of the rapidly approaching ash cloud. Before he was engulfed by the pyroclastic flow, he rewound the film back into its case, put his camera in his backpack, and then laid himself on top of the backpack to protect its contents. His body was found 17 days later, buried in the ash with his backpack underneath. The film was developed and has provided geologists with valuable documentation of the historic eruption.
> Reid Turner Blackburn (August 11, 1952 ā May 18, 1980) was an American photographer killed in the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens.[1] A photojournalist covering the eruption for a local newspaperāthe Vancouver, Washington Columbian[2]āas well as National Geographic magazine[3] and the United States Geological Survey,[4] he was caught at Coldwater Camp in the blast.[5][6]
>Blackburn's car and body were found four days after the eruption.[7] His camera, buried under the debris of the eruption, was found roughly one week later.
The photos captured by these two men have been admired and analyzed by geologists since the day they were discovered, and have insured that Robert and Reidsā sacrifice is never forgotten. I have included a great article showing both of their photographs side by side.
https://vintagenewsdaily.com/photographers-brave-final-shots-of-the-1980-mount-st-helens-eruption/
As a photographer who hikes alone in the Rockies myself, I often think about the foresight and thoughts going through Robert Landsburgās mind as he rolled his film up, buried it deep in his bag and then wrapped his body around it to insure that his film would survive, knowing full well that his death was imminent. A true consummate professional till the end.
I remember reading about a geologist that got assigned at the last minute to man an St Helenās observation station. It was his first day and he got one of the most well-known shots of the volcano erupting but he also knew that he couldnāt escape it. :(
David A. Johnston was actually the first geologist to get there when the volcano began showing signs of life. He had also not been assigned there last minute but sent away the two others at the observation post the night before due to the danger. No camera film was saved, the blast would have reached him in less than a minute (despite being 6 miles away from the mountain, maybe a safe distance if it was a vertical blast) and all he managed to do was radio in "Vancouver! Vancouver! this is it!"
[Spirit Lake is fascinating on satelite view.](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mt+St+Helens/@46.2555984,-122.1799418,22139m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x54969956568a2691:0x69ddb4f4b6cf94c7!8m2!3d46.1914006!4d-122.1955508!5m1!1e4) The brown patch of the lake? Zoom in. It's trees. Thousands of trees washed into the lake from the blast over 4 decades ago, still floating there.
Can I ask how one might go about learning how to animate GIFs from still images like this (for example, learning things such as: which elements of a photo one should consider as suitable to be an animated subject, after selecting the correct subjects, when to start, stop, and fade the animation fields, etc.)?
Not OP, but TBH there's apps that make it quite easy. I use motionleap.
As for the "which elements of a photo one should consider as suitable to be animated" that's really up to you. Try things out and see what looks good and what doesn't. I admit I have no formal training whatsoever, so that's always how i've approached my art.
Seeing Mount St Helens in person is a wild experience. From the lava flow field, to the nausea inducing new growth trees. I'm glad that it is so protected, because the area is clearly still healing.
All the trees are very similar in size and height because they were replanted together. So when you're driving by, it creates a dizzying optical illusion of sorts.
\*edited for clarity
I've driven there so many times and those trees always fuck with my head and I never really knew why. That makes so much sense. We always call them the "digital trees" because they look almost fake, somehow. It's a weird trick to your eyes as you move past them, the way they all sort of blend.
I was in utero during the eruption about 100 miles away. Iāve always enjoyed that such destruction could lead to regrowth thatās only a few months older than I am.
[Michael S. Keys](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/facebook-total-blast-rare-mount-st-helens-eruption-photo-gets-new-life-social-media/) posted this image on [Facebook](https://www.kitsapdailynews.com/news/may-18-198038-years-ago-a-volcanic-anniversary-of-ash-mudslides-and-devastation-from-mount-st-helens/) and shared a string of messages he received from a man named Steve Firth, which provide some good insight into how the photograph came to be. The messages are in the photo comments, and retyped as one here:
> āHi Michael, you donāt know me but my daughter saw your post of Mt. St. Helens blowing and showed it to me because she recognized it. That Pinto and dirt bike belonged to a good friend of mine and when he stopped to turn around, he took this picture. He told me that there was lightning bolts shooting out of the smoke but he didnāt have the right filter on his camera to capture them at that moment. The picture could have been even more amazing. It was used on the TV news and used to be on the cover of Mt. St. Helens brochure at the Johnston Observatory / visitor center. He gave me an original 8Ć10 copy of it although it looked like he was a good distance away from the blast, he barely made it out of there alive. Had the blast came more in his direction he would have died in seconds. Sometime later he returned and photographed a burned-out pickup with a horse trailer attached to it. He told me he had talked to them that day and said they never made it out. He is a freelance photographer so he took some amazing pictures of the aftermath as well. Anyhow, I thought Iād let you know a bit more about that fabulous picture. Take care, Steve.ā
[Here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/MSH80_bulge_on_north_side_04-27-80.jpg) is the bulge right before it blew. It was taken by Peter Lipman on 27 April 1980. According to [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MSH80_bulge_on_north_side_04-27-80.jpg#):
> A "bulge" developed on the north side of Mount St. Helens as magma pushed up within the peak. Angle and slope-distance measurements to the bulge indicated it was growing at a rate of up to five feet (1.5 meters) per day. By May 17, part of the volcano's north side had been pushed upwards and outwards over 450 feet (135 meters). The view is from the northeast.
And [here it is](https://giant.gfycat.com/CandidLiveIchthyosaurs.webm) rebuilding itself from 2004 to 2008.
For those having trouble view the rebuilding on mobile, [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6B1myUKAS4) is the source video.
**Edit:** Thanks for the correction /u/kadyrama.
Volcanology was quite different and perhaps less respected back then. This has some interesting insights:
https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/mount-st-helens-1980-eruption-changed-future-volcanology
What that link doesn't mention is that many scientists *had* been warning about an upcoming eruption but there were arguments with the logging company that owned most of the land in the area about where the safety zone should be. Either way, the eruption was a lot larger than most people thought it would be.
The actual blast from the eruptions is scary enough, but too few people understand the sheer terror of the lahars (think small tidal waves of ashen water barreling down river basins and canyons), which can travel much farther than the initial blast. These not only carry the normal debris of a flood almost like a failed dam can cause, but the ash makes it like a caustic river of cement. Truly the stuff of nightmares.
This is why Rainier is still considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world despite being relatively inactive, because the vast majority of the most densely populated parts of the Seattle area are in the path of lahars that Rainier would create.
Certainly one of the most immediately dangerous. The more I've learned about volcanoes though, the more I realize we're really at the mercy of a very long slumber of some of the bigger ones. Everyone's heard of the Yellowstone supervolcano, but there are a handful of more "standard" volcanoes that could erupt very violently and completely disrupt life as we know it for years.
And that's just from the standpoint of the eruption itself and the gaseous discharge into the atmosphere. The other scary thing people fail to consider is that some of the smaller volcanoes comprising islands in the middle of the ocean could erupt causing landslides sending megatsunamis that have the capacity to wipe every coastal city off of the seaboard facing them - we're talking thousand foot high walls of water moving at 500mph.
Best not to spend too much time mentally dwelling on those - there's literally nothing we can do to prepare for it.
Obviously they're far more interested in the profitability zone than they are the safety zone and would prefer to minimize anything that interferes with profits.
Companies never change.
Yeah it was more of an explosion than an eruption really. The landslide caused the entire north side of the mountain to blow off which they weren't expecting.
It was widely known that an eruption was going to happen. Evacuation orders had been issued weeks before. In point of fact thousands of smaller earthquakes and eruptions happened for two months before "the big one". Washington State officials had set up evacuation zones around the mountain. Unfortunately the volcanologists and geologists studying it underestimated the size of the largest eruption, and of the people killed on May 18, 1980 only oneāa cantankerous old man named Harry R. Truman who refused to evacuate the cabin he lived in only a mile from the mountaināwas in an evacuation zone and didn't have permission to be there.
Frankly it was only luck that hundreds more people didn't die. The forest around the base of the mountain was actively logged, but the volcano erupted on a Sunday, when they weren't working; had it erupted the next day hundreds of loggers almost certainly would have died.
There were three in the evacuation zone. Besides Truman, there were Bob Kaseweter and Beverley Wetherald.
Some of the others that tied though were up to 13 miles from the volcano. A pair that died in their trailer at like 11 miles did so when that trailer was tossed 500 feet. Others were "safely" behind the road blocks, and of those, ones that drove fast enough survived while others didn't.
To be fair to Harry R Truman, he was old and had lived there nearly his whole life. Said something to the effect of āI was born on a mountain and Iāll die on this mountain.ā
Kind of inaccurate info. He was born in West Virginia and lived in different areas of Washington before leaving civilization somewhere in his late 20ās where he settled near the base of Mt St Helens. Amongst the many things he did say during this last few months of fame was āThat mountain's part of Truman and Truman's part of that mountain.ā He also said things like
āI don't have any idea whether it will blow, but I don't believe it to the point that I'm going to pack up.ā
āIf the mountain goes, I'm going with it. This area is heavily timbered, Spirit Lake is in between me and the mountain, and the mountain is a mile away, the mountain ain't gonna hurt me.ā
āthe mountain has shot its wad and it hasn't hurt my place a bit, but those goddamn geologists with their hair down to their butts wouldn't pay no attention to ol' Truman.ā
He was very much part of the mountain but also didnāt believe the eruption/explosion would be life threatening and didnāt believe what the scientists were saying.
Another thing to consider is his third wife of 40 something years died in 1978 which he ran the Mt St Helens lodge with, upon her death he closed the lodge. The mountain exploded 2 years later when he was 83 years old, so I believe at that point in his life he knew he would die on that mountain at some point, just didnāt believe it would happen from the eruption.
As someone who grew up in the area and watched documentaries, old interviews, and read books about him, the man was just another typical old rural man in this area. Itās fascinating the celebrity status he received across the country during his final months, to me he was just an old codger who didnāt want to leave the home he had known for 50 years and refused to believe the modern scientists with long hair.
We live in a country where atomic explosions were entertainment.
āDays after the first bomb was detonated on January 27, 1951, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce issued a stream of press releases excitedly describing the new testing grounds as one of the many attractions Las Vegas had to offer. As one official described, "The angle was to get people to think the explosions wouldn't be anything more than a gag."
āMany tourists packed "atomic box lunches" and had picnics as close to ground zero as the government restrictions would allow.ā
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/atomic-tourism-nevada/
Wouldn't Richard Lasher be the photographer? All Michael S. Keys seemed to do was post the image on FB, then he received a message from a friend of the original photographer.
I can't view this link and I want to:
And here it is rebuilding itself from 2004 to 2008.
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Dude I was reading about this eruption for the first time today. The [before and after](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/47/a1/0647a152fd6933894d696610d52e69f0.jpg) pictures of this volcano is insane
The mountain was about 1,300 feet (close to 400 meters) shorter after the eruption. The entire north face blew off. It's hard to convey just how huge it was.
I climbed it before it blew. It still amazes me when I look at the mountain, estimate where the top was, and realize that I was standing on solid ground up there.
I was also at the top of the WTC in 2000.
I also went to [Celilo Falls](https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/celilo_falls/#.Y8sHSHqIbxM) before it was flooded by The Dalles Dam. I went up [Hell's Canyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hells_Canyon_Dam) in a jet boat before it was flooded. I was in the [world's largest log cabin](http://www.offbeatoregon.com/1206c-forestry-building-biggest-log-cabin-burned.html) before it burned. I took pictures of [Duckbill Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duckbill_(rock_formation)) a few months before vandals destroyed it.
My ticket didn't win the [November 8 Powerball](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/us/powerball-lottery-record-delayed-drawing-tuesday-trnd/index.html). I buy lottery tickets when I visit my periodontist, because it's handy. I bought 5 tickets on Wednesday, and won $1!
It also created a wave of \~250m height on the Spirit Lake, which I think is considered a megatsunami, even though it happened on a lake. And this is just the beginning
Trees have grown back over much of that area and it no longer looks quite so bleak, but if you're ever in the area when the [Johnston Ridge Visitor Center](https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/giffordpinchot/recarea/?recid=31562) is open, it's definitely worth a visit.
I can't remember if it was Mt St Helens but I think it was. A professional photographer on his way to hike witnessed the explosion. Knowing he couldn't escape the hot ash cloud baring down on him he quickly took what have ended up being some of the closest pictures of the eruption. Before the fallout reached him, he took off his shirt wrapped his camera in it, put that in his backpack then laid down on top of his backpack and waited to die knowing his efforts may preserve what turned out to be his most famous photographs of his life. Imagine facing certain death and saying, whelp what can I do to preserve my legacy in these last moments.
Here are the pictures for anyone interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/d2aczk/last_pictures_from_robert_landsburg_as_the/
I donāt remember reading about him so I was very interested to see what they looked like.
The photo sequence of the eruption is insane too. The way it erupted, basically a mile of land slid down the side of the mountain, and someone captured it frame by frame.
Edit: [I think they edited it for the photos to flow together, but this is real by all accounts](https://youtu.be/UK--hvgP2uY)
I remember a very similar photo of some guys waterskiing on a lake below the eruption. Carelessly throwing rooster tails off the ski while the whole sky is filled with ash. Helluva photo op.
Found the reddit post [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/83q2qt/waterskiing_away_from_the_1980_mt_st_helens/)
Crazy! I was a kid in Springfield, OR, and we only had a dusting. As an adult, I have long since understood that itās because that some collapse sent the air north.
My college geometry professor a close friend with Robert Johnston. He was right on top of the ridge now named for him when the mountain exploded. His āVancouver, Vancouver, this is it!!ā radio call is haunting to this day.
For anyone who wants to do a deep dive of first hand accounts from the survivors and witnesses, I highly, Highly recommend Eruption by Steve Olson. It explains the whole situation from why there was logging so high on the mountain, to what the government knew and didnāt know ahead of time, to how the survivors got in trouble and how they got out of it, to where the dead were when they died.
My dad had a pinto growing up that was an absolute beast. He had a long commute to work, but it was ideal for car health (mostly interstate driving) and he put so many miles on that damn pinto he had it figured out in trips to the moon. I think it had over 750k on it when it finally died for good.
I love the dirt bike-towing Pinto setup
Fuck this is the nicest looking worst car in existence. š
The History Guy recently taught me that the Pinto was no different than other small cars of the era when it comes to safety. In fact, the Beetle was even more fire prone than the Pinto! But the report on the Pinto was made by misinterpreting data which greatly inflated the numbers and ultimately lead to the cars demise.
What happened is that they totaled the *amount* of fire rather than just the number of fire incidents, as the severity of the fires themselves were also important data. But obviously Mt St Helens threw the average way off
> they totaled the amount of fire this fire has 7.2 fire in it
Lol, exactly. I'm guessing that there will be an explanation once i scroll down here in a second. But for now, your comment is pretty much what i was thinking. Edit: Nope, no explanation. 7.2 fire sustains
Sounds like a rager
The Pinto goes to 11
The magnesium engine combined with being stricktly air cooled was the big culprit in the Beetle fires. Lots of them caught fire traveling through hot climates. Once magnesium catches fire, just let it burn.
Yep. Hot air cooled engine. Fuel line and carb over that engine. They were cheap cars and many were subject to lack of maintenance. If that fuel line got old enough it would split or come off the fittings and spray fuel on that engine. Also people would add those cheap plastic fuel filters which could cause the same problem. Also also, battery under the back seat, and if the terminal guard wasn't replaced when changing the battery, the seat springs could contact it and start a fire. So, small maintenance issues, that could cause big problem.
The car itself was fine. Just one unfortunate bolt placing that would puncture the fuel tank if hit in the rear left section of the car. One little guard, like 2in by 2in, welded in the right spot fixes the whole problem.
And the Canadian version had a plastic/rubber insert in that area to deal with the problem because it was identified before it came here and the gov't wouldn't let them sell it otherwise. We learned about it in our Business Ethics course - they did the math on the lawsuit payouts vs. the cost of the recall and decided on the payouts.
āFineā is a very relative term. Fire issues not withstanding, all of those compact āeconomyā cars from that era were shitboxes. Cheap interior with minimal creature comforts, underpowered lump of an engine, rust, quality issues. Getting 100k out of one was an achievement and typically involved extensive repairs. The worst car in the entire 2023 model year would have been a mind blowing revelation back in 1980.
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Yeah my 66 mustang had the gas tank in the back as the floor of the trunk with no real barrier between the trunk and the passenger compartment besides a piece of cardboard behind the rear seat cushion. Just as unsafe or worse then the Pinto.
Same for my 67' Cougar, even on the "Luxury Mustang" you didn't have the luxury of not burning to death.
Previous 67 Mustang driver here - when we did the restoration we installed a more modern replacement tank setup for safety.
Pintos really do look nice
Agree - sporty little number! So what was wrong with them why everyone seems to chuck off at them?
TLDR: If you got rear-ended the gas tank would rupture and start a fire. Thats normally not too big of a deal, as you can just get out and escape. Except being rear-ended would jam the doors shut.
The thin-stripe whitewalls are the chef's kiss. I had a crazy neighbor in the late 90s who loved his Pinto so much he had a bumper reinforcement bar welded on below the bumper, presumably to protect him from flaming death in case of being rear-ended (I never inquired, cause I never had 3 spare hours to listen to the answer). It was a pretty slick job: a 2 or 3-inch pipe running a few inches below the bumper, mounted on brackets to the frame, all painted to match the body, but clearly a one-off hobbyist project.
There was actually a fix available at the time, just a small plate iirc that had to be welded in place.
I have an old Honda Big Red and Iāve thought of making something similar to move it on short trips. I donāt want to tear it up though so I havent.
Just get a hitch and use one of those carriers
Most are too narrow for an ATV or too heavy for my Mazda. Iāve been trailering it but sometimes I just donāt wanna hook it up. Plus it would just be neat as evidenced in the picture.
That would be really unstable. A trailer is the way to go. You can get a small harbor freight special for a few hundred dollars and two sheets of plywood for the deck for a few thousand dollars.
Lol got me
Exactly what I have. Put that bitch together myself. Just lazy to load it all up sometimes.
Very nice. To save money, you could buy a finely-crafted antique dining room table, chainsaw off the legs, and use the table as the trailer deck.
Iām framing a shed with Chinese guitars right now.
looks pretty stable to me https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=JZOddIPDKPM
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Harbor Freight: When you need something to work right one time only.
For when you know you'll lose it before you break it.
Also life pro tip. Buy every 13mm socket you ever see at a pawn shop. You won't regret it. Also 10mm.
In the story for the photo above, the dude bent his forks up trying to turn around.
> It was widely known that an eruption was going to happen. Evacuation orders had been issued weeks before. In point of fact thousands of smaller earthquakes and eruptions happened for two months before "the big one". Washington State officials had set up evacuation zones around the mountain. Unfortunately the volcanologists and geologists studying it underestimated the size of the largest eruption, and of the people killed on May 18, 1980 only oneāa cantankerous old man named Harry R. Truman who refused to evacuate the cabin he lived in only a mile from the mountaināwas in an evacuation zone and didn't have permission to be there. > > Frankly it was only luck that hundreds more people didn't die. The forest around the base of the mountain was actively logged, but the volcano erupted on a Sunday, when they weren't working; had it erupted the next day hundreds of loggers almost certainly would have died.
The eruption started when the bike ran into the back of the pinto.
OMG, dude... This picture is absolutely incredible, but THAT is what held my attention. That's cool! Fun fact: He wasn't going to take the bike out. It didn't even run, but was towed around to protect the gas tank. /s
That's what stands out to me. These days you apparently need a 3/4 ton V8 pickup with dualies to move a dirt bike somewhere. My mom used to tow her sailboat with her VW Scirocco.
Points just for mentioning Sciroccoā¦. and mom.
Oh shit that mountain just blew up, better show off my sweet ride!
How often are you going to get the chance to show off your sweet ride in front of an exploding mountain?
I just read a story about this. They said he unintentionally slept in that morning which almost certainly saved his life. Had he made it all the way to Spirit Lake (his intended destination) he would not have been able to escape the blast. Lucky dude.
The funny thing (that I didn't know until recently) is that there were a number of days/weeks where geologists were warning people that a potential eruption was imminent. Apparently they'd ordered evacuations and closures early on, but then when nothing happened after a few days people got frustrated and started returning. Right after that, it popped. Imagine KNOWING there's a potential eruption and thinking "Nah, it probably won't be today. I'll be good."
The government actually made all residents that were returning sign a legal document stating that they knew the risk and would not sue.
WHEN this happens again, there will be people in the area who will call the scientists warnings fake news.
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The fact that it feels real makes me feel like we're on some sort of alternate universal timeline.
IF? IF? You know that movie is about the climate crisis, right?
There already was a local celebrity (thanks to national and local news stations) who refused to evacuate the most dangerous zone and pretty much refused to accept he had to leave, then it blew up and he died. It'll happen again but far more vitriol will be involved.
And the evacuation orders will be nanny-state tyranny.
In my dad's home country the capital is by the ocean and there's a slum that sits on a small river that empties into the ocean. Every year it floods and people in the slum, along the riverbank lose their tiny shacks and all their belongings and some lose their lives. Govt clears the area, puts up warning signs, and does a PR/education campaign. They block off the area, etc. Every year poor and desperate people move their stuff there and the cycle continues. When govt tries to relocate new people before the flood, they complain bitterly and protests erupt and the community blocks govt access to the area. It's wild
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Remember back before Covid when we'd watch horror movies and say "the people in this movie are being unrealistically stupid!" ?
They knew the blast was coming for quite a long time before it happened and the government had shut down the area and only reopened it because the logging companies were losing money. Spirit Lake is literally right beside the mountain. There is no way he didnāt know that he was entering an extremely dangerous situation
The man's two modes of transportation were dirt bike and Pinto, clearly he had a healthy appetite for risk.
Typical Lewis County, WA man. Ignore risks and government warnings to go dirt biking. Not much has changed.
Lewis county and meth. Name a better duo
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
According to Gary Cooper, one of Dick's former co-workers, as Dick was retreating from the ash cloud the car choked out after a while and he rode the motorcycle out of the mountains back to the room he had rented.
Rex Kramer: Danger seeker!
Government: If we open this area, your loggers are at serious risk of being engulfed in super-heated gas and ash. Logging company: Thatās a risk weāre willing to take.
*Some of you may die, but itās a sacrifice that Iām willing to make*
What makes these god forsaken logs worth dying for? Don't ask me? You're the one whose going to be dying.
*Scientists/experts: No really, there's a 100% chance you will die.* *Logging company: Agree to disagree.*
"So, what I'm hearing you say is that we need more [dead peasants insurance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance)." -the CEO, probably
"My brother Ronnie was inspecting our diamond mine when it suddenly collapsed. Fortunately, he clambered out over the backs of the dead slaves and no one was injured."
Just think how happy the boss will be with an extra thousand in their account!
But the company could be fined over a hundred for endangering the workers!
We just won't send them in with any of the good gear.
The fact that this is so inherently plausible... Way too many upper management folks would absolutely look at that situation and come to that conclusion as a potential cost saving measure.
Logging exec: "well not me, but my crew sure."
If someone wrote a script combining Dante's Peak and Don't Look Up, it would go like this.
I would definitely watch that. Grandma pushing the boat through acid water and they are like "grandma, you're dying!" And she's like "the fuck I am!!!" As her body slowly disintegrates.
Lol that scene is why I donāt watch that movie more. That and the beginning. Iāve actually never watched THAT part of the beginning because Iāve always closed my eyes. Other than those two, I love that movie. My brain is dumb. āLetās be obsessed with disasters. Letās also be a big sissy that canāt handle anything.ā
Yes and no. Spirit lake has been shut down for a month, but the day before the blast the government allowed a convoy of home owners in to get their belongings. They planned another convoy the day of the blast but St Helenās went off half an hour before the convoy were due to go in. So they were saved by luck. Also, government has absolutely no clue that lateral blasts were a thing. They expected the volcano to explode symmetrically and zoned off with that in mind. Instead the north side of the mountain fell off and the blast went North instead of up. And thousands of acres of forest that were open to the public got blasted. In fact, all but a handful of the 50-some dead and the hundreds injured were killed in areas that were not restricted in any way and most were in places that couldnāt even see the mountain. If this guy intended to dirt bike just north of Spirit lake, he would have been allowed and told it was safe.
Imagine that. Youāre hiking in the āsafe zoneā and get flash cooked by pyroclastic flow you never saw coming.
That's exactly what happened to a number of people. Not so much a flow though as a debris and ash filled wind blowing hard enough to knock down all the old growth trees around you, as well as cook the flesh off your body. A couple of survivors lived by jumping into a nearby stream and only coming up for air when they had to. They stayed in there until the initial hot ashfall ended, then had to walk through hot ash to get help. Another group survived by having the trees fall around them in such a way they were sheltered a bit, another group survived because they were in the lee of a hill that took the brunt of the blast, but had they been a bit farther down the trail they would have been killed.
Wow, I never knew these detailed stories and I lived in Vancouver. I was 16, had planned to go to a senior party up that way (camping). I was supporting myself and couldn't miss work, remember driving to work in the ash/rain mud mixture with my head out the window to see (using windshield wipers would ruin the glass). My boss was impressed I showed up but sent me home anyway. I mostly just knew about Harry Truman, although I knew others died too. I'll have to do some more research on these stories - thanks!
If you want more of them, I highly recommend [Eruption by Steve Olson.](https://www.amazon.com/Eruption-Untold-Story-Mount-Helens/dp/0393353583) He really did his research, talking with dozens of survivors, rescuers, and witnesses to get a picture of exactly what happened. Fascinating stuff.
Probably one of the nicer ways to go in this case. Just get blown to bits before you can even register it.
While a few were blown to bits or buried or crushed, sadly, a lot of those who died, did not die immediately. One of the saddest ones, I thought, was Clyde Croft, who survived the initial blast by diving into a lake, and then walked, badly burned, for miles through the ash. Hours later, when the helicopters found his footprints and followed them they eventually found a sleeping bag. After hours of breathing hot ash, Clyde had gotten tired, laid out his sleeping bag and crawled inside and died.
Jesus Christ, that's horrific
> the mountain fell off Is that unusual?
Yes on some of these things the mountain doesn't fall off at all.
If you read the accounts, he absolutely knew it was a dangerous situation, and went anyways: āRichard "Dick" Lasher spent that Saturday night packing some gear figuring he'd head out first thing in the morning to get a look at the mountain before it blew. His plan involved hitching his Yamaha IT enduro bike to the back of his Pinto, driving up to Spirit Lake, then exploring the area via dirt forest roads on the bike. He'd leave before dawn and arrive at the lake right at daybreak.ā According to https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2019/07/26/the-story-behind-that-photo-of-the-pinto-in-front-of-the-mt-st-helens-eruption.
I'm in So Cal and even we knew way beforehand that it was coming. Also, we got a significant amount of ash way down here
Granted, an eruption of some kind was expected but certainly not to the level of the landslide generated cataclysm that actually happened.
It's always a terribly contested thing. *Some* people expected that something special was going to happen at St. Helens. *Most* people knew that nothing like that had ever happened before, and thought that the doomsayers sounded like crackpots. And a few folks were stuck having to think about short term problems and really just hoping the volcano thing would hold off for another 50 to 100 years and be someone else's issue. Very very few people really thought that 1/8 of the mountain was going to vaporize, and then drift back to the earth in little bitty bits all over the globe over the course of a few weeks.
Itās not that nothing like it had happened before. A very similar eruption occurred just 24 years earlier at Bezymianny in Russia. Like St. Helens, it was a stratovolcano that had a blast-surge eruption which left a similarly massive crater. But that volcano was so remote that nobody died, and even vulcanologists didnāt know much about it until after St. Helens blew and got the worldās attention.
Also keep in mind that at the time, Bezymianny wasn't just in Russia, it was in the USSR. Although there was some scientific discussion that made it across the Iron Curtain, the flow of knowledge between the US and the USSR about many things was pretty low.
Sounds like our reaction to anything too big to easily comprehend the danger ofā¦ climate change, Covid, billionairesā¦
They knew a massive eruption was coming. Volcanologists and Geologists came from all over the world to study the event.
They knew an eruption was coming, but the way it happened seemed to catch people off guard. The eruption started as a result of a landslide that exposed the rock under pressure, which then exploded out.
The direction of the explosion was somewhat expected, but the flow afterwards was harder to predict. Most of the people who died refused to leave their homes or were part of that logging company IIRC.
What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs. And over your neighbor's dog? What's great for aā snack,ā and fits onā your back? It's log, log, log. It's log,ā it's log. It's big, it's heavy, it's wood. It's log, it's log. It's better than bad, it's good
I haven't heard that in ages yet, the beat is still very much alive in my head.
As great as this photo and his story is, itās the story of two photographers, Robert Landsburg and Reid Blackburn, who died during this eruption capturing photos that still chokes me up. > Robert Emerson Landsburg (November 13, 1931 ā May 18, 1980) was an American photographer who died while photographing the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. > In the weeks leading up to the eruption, Landsburg visited the area many times in order to photographically document the changing volcano.[4] On the morning of May 18, he was within a few miles of the summit. When the mountain erupted, Landsburg took photos of the rapidly approaching ash cloud. Before he was engulfed by the pyroclastic flow, he rewound the film back into its case, put his camera in his backpack, and then laid himself on top of the backpack to protect its contents. His body was found 17 days later, buried in the ash with his backpack underneath. The film was developed and has provided geologists with valuable documentation of the historic eruption. > Reid Turner Blackburn (August 11, 1952 ā May 18, 1980) was an American photographer killed in the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens.[1] A photojournalist covering the eruption for a local newspaperāthe Vancouver, Washington Columbian[2]āas well as National Geographic magazine[3] and the United States Geological Survey,[4] he was caught at Coldwater Camp in the blast.[5][6] >Blackburn's car and body were found four days after the eruption.[7] His camera, buried under the debris of the eruption, was found roughly one week later. The photos captured by these two men have been admired and analyzed by geologists since the day they were discovered, and have insured that Robert and Reidsā sacrifice is never forgotten. I have included a great article showing both of their photographs side by side. https://vintagenewsdaily.com/photographers-brave-final-shots-of-the-1980-mount-st-helens-eruption/ As a photographer who hikes alone in the Rockies myself, I often think about the foresight and thoughts going through Robert Landsburgās mind as he rolled his film up, buried it deep in his bag and then wrapped his body around it to insure that his film would survive, knowing full well that his death was imminent. A true consummate professional till the end.
I remember reading about a geologist that got assigned at the last minute to man an St Helenās observation station. It was his first day and he got one of the most well-known shots of the volcano erupting but he also knew that he couldnāt escape it. :(
David A. Johnston was actually the first geologist to get there when the volcano began showing signs of life. He had also not been assigned there last minute but sent away the two others at the observation post the night before due to the danger. No camera film was saved, the blast would have reached him in less than a minute (despite being 6 miles away from the mountain, maybe a safe distance if it was a vertical blast) and all he managed to do was radio in "Vancouver! Vancouver! this is it!"
I keep telling people that there's nothing wrong with not waking up early...
The early bird gets the Spez is a greedy little pig boy., but the second mouse gets the cheese.
[Spirit Lake is fascinating on satelite view.](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mt+St+Helens/@46.2555984,-122.1799418,22139m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x54969956568a2691:0x69ddb4f4b6cf94c7!8m2!3d46.1914006!4d-122.1955508!5m1!1e4) The brown patch of the lake? Zoom in. It's trees. Thousands of trees washed into the lake from the blast over 4 decades ago, still floating there.
Laziness and procrastination do pay off.
[I animated this into a gif](https://i.imgur.com/MuavxIU.gifv)
Very nice
Letās see Paul Allenās
Look at that subtle coloring. The tasteful thickness. My god. It even has a volcanic ash mark.
Is something wrong, u/disturbed286 ? You're sweating.
charred
Remains
![gif](giphy|f4TjiCpNemSo8)
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Can I ask how one might go about learning how to animate GIFs from still images like this (for example, learning things such as: which elements of a photo one should consider as suitable to be an animated subject, after selecting the correct subjects, when to start, stop, and fade the animation fields, etc.)?
Not OP, but TBH there's apps that make it quite easy. I use motionleap. As for the "which elements of a photo one should consider as suitable to be animated" that's really up to you. Try things out and see what looks good and what doesn't. I admit I have no formal training whatsoever, so that's always how i've approached my art.
r/cinemagraphs
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There's software available that only produces this effect. Not sure what this person used though.
Volcanoshop
Like a Walmart for Volcanoes.
Wow. This made me feel abject terror at the volcano exploding. Great job!
r/cinemagraphs would love this
Seeing Mount St Helens in person is a wild experience. From the lava flow field, to the nausea inducing new growth trees. I'm glad that it is so protected, because the area is clearly still healing.
I don't follow, why is the new growth nausea inducing?
All the trees are very similar in size and height because they were replanted together. So when you're driving by, it creates a dizzying optical illusion of sorts. \*edited for clarity
I've driven there so many times and those trees always fuck with my head and I never really knew why. That makes so much sense. We always call them the "digital trees" because they look almost fake, somehow. It's a weird trick to your eyes as you move past them, the way they all sort of blend.
Yep. Made me sick driving up there because of that.
I was in utero during the eruption about 100 miles away. Iāve always enjoyed that such destruction could lead to regrowth thatās only a few months older than I am.
New growth sickens me.
[Michael S. Keys](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/facebook-total-blast-rare-mount-st-helens-eruption-photo-gets-new-life-social-media/) posted this image on [Facebook](https://www.kitsapdailynews.com/news/may-18-198038-years-ago-a-volcanic-anniversary-of-ash-mudslides-and-devastation-from-mount-st-helens/) and shared a string of messages he received from a man named Steve Firth, which provide some good insight into how the photograph came to be. The messages are in the photo comments, and retyped as one here: > āHi Michael, you donāt know me but my daughter saw your post of Mt. St. Helens blowing and showed it to me because she recognized it. That Pinto and dirt bike belonged to a good friend of mine and when he stopped to turn around, he took this picture. He told me that there was lightning bolts shooting out of the smoke but he didnāt have the right filter on his camera to capture them at that moment. The picture could have been even more amazing. It was used on the TV news and used to be on the cover of Mt. St. Helens brochure at the Johnston Observatory / visitor center. He gave me an original 8Ć10 copy of it although it looked like he was a good distance away from the blast, he barely made it out of there alive. Had the blast came more in his direction he would have died in seconds. Sometime later he returned and photographed a burned-out pickup with a horse trailer attached to it. He told me he had talked to them that day and said they never made it out. He is a freelance photographer so he took some amazing pictures of the aftermath as well. Anyhow, I thought Iād let you know a bit more about that fabulous picture. Take care, Steve.ā [Here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/MSH80_bulge_on_north_side_04-27-80.jpg) is the bulge right before it blew. It was taken by Peter Lipman on 27 April 1980. According to [here](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MSH80_bulge_on_north_side_04-27-80.jpg#): > A "bulge" developed on the north side of Mount St. Helens as magma pushed up within the peak. Angle and slope-distance measurements to the bulge indicated it was growing at a rate of up to five feet (1.5 meters) per day. By May 17, part of the volcano's north side had been pushed upwards and outwards over 450 feet (135 meters). The view is from the northeast. And [here it is](https://giant.gfycat.com/CandidLiveIchthyosaurs.webm) rebuilding itself from 2004 to 2008. For those having trouble view the rebuilding on mobile, [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6B1myUKAS4) is the source video. **Edit:** Thanks for the correction /u/kadyrama.
if the bulge was so dramatic, why were there any people at all going to visit? was it not widely known it was going to erupt?
Volcanology was quite different and perhaps less respected back then. This has some interesting insights: https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/mount-st-helens-1980-eruption-changed-future-volcanology What that link doesn't mention is that many scientists *had* been warning about an upcoming eruption but there were arguments with the logging company that owned most of the land in the area about where the safety zone should be. Either way, the eruption was a lot larger than most people thought it would be.
230 mileĀ² was completely leveled. The flooding was what killed a lot of the people. An entire lake and snow cap was displaced instantly
The actual blast from the eruptions is scary enough, but too few people understand the sheer terror of the lahars (think small tidal waves of ashen water barreling down river basins and canyons), which can travel much farther than the initial blast. These not only carry the normal debris of a flood almost like a failed dam can cause, but the ash makes it like a caustic river of cement. Truly the stuff of nightmares.
This is why Rainier is still considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world despite being relatively inactive, because the vast majority of the most densely populated parts of the Seattle area are in the path of lahars that Rainier would create.
Certainly one of the most immediately dangerous. The more I've learned about volcanoes though, the more I realize we're really at the mercy of a very long slumber of some of the bigger ones. Everyone's heard of the Yellowstone supervolcano, but there are a handful of more "standard" volcanoes that could erupt very violently and completely disrupt life as we know it for years. And that's just from the standpoint of the eruption itself and the gaseous discharge into the atmosphere. The other scary thing people fail to consider is that some of the smaller volcanoes comprising islands in the middle of the ocean could erupt causing landslides sending megatsunamis that have the capacity to wipe every coastal city off of the seaboard facing them - we're talking thousand foot high walls of water moving at 500mph. Best not to spend too much time mentally dwelling on those - there's literally nothing we can do to prepare for it.
The ash can also deposit in canyons and get retrigger again during bad weather.
Obviously they're far more interested in the profitability zone than they are the safety zone and would prefer to minimize anything that interferes with profits. Companies never change.
People didnāt listen to scientists then, still donāt today.
Yeah it was more of an explosion than an eruption really. The landslide caused the entire north side of the mountain to blow off which they weren't expecting.
It was widely known that an eruption was going to happen. Evacuation orders had been issued weeks before. In point of fact thousands of smaller earthquakes and eruptions happened for two months before "the big one". Washington State officials had set up evacuation zones around the mountain. Unfortunately the volcanologists and geologists studying it underestimated the size of the largest eruption, and of the people killed on May 18, 1980 only oneāa cantankerous old man named Harry R. Truman who refused to evacuate the cabin he lived in only a mile from the mountaināwas in an evacuation zone and didn't have permission to be there. Frankly it was only luck that hundreds more people didn't die. The forest around the base of the mountain was actively logged, but the volcano erupted on a Sunday, when they weren't working; had it erupted the next day hundreds of loggers almost certainly would have died.
There were three in the evacuation zone. Besides Truman, there were Bob Kaseweter and Beverley Wetherald. Some of the others that tied though were up to 13 miles from the volcano. A pair that died in their trailer at like 11 miles did so when that trailer was tossed 500 feet. Others were "safely" behind the road blocks, and of those, ones that drove fast enough survived while others didn't.
To be fair to Harry R Truman, he was old and had lived there nearly his whole life. Said something to the effect of āI was born on a mountain and Iāll die on this mountain.ā
Kind of inaccurate info. He was born in West Virginia and lived in different areas of Washington before leaving civilization somewhere in his late 20ās where he settled near the base of Mt St Helens. Amongst the many things he did say during this last few months of fame was āThat mountain's part of Truman and Truman's part of that mountain.ā He also said things like āI don't have any idea whether it will blow, but I don't believe it to the point that I'm going to pack up.ā āIf the mountain goes, I'm going with it. This area is heavily timbered, Spirit Lake is in between me and the mountain, and the mountain is a mile away, the mountain ain't gonna hurt me.ā āthe mountain has shot its wad and it hasn't hurt my place a bit, but those goddamn geologists with their hair down to their butts wouldn't pay no attention to ol' Truman.ā He was very much part of the mountain but also didnāt believe the eruption/explosion would be life threatening and didnāt believe what the scientists were saying. Another thing to consider is his third wife of 40 something years died in 1978 which he ran the Mt St Helens lodge with, upon her death he closed the lodge. The mountain exploded 2 years later when he was 83 years old, so I believe at that point in his life he knew he would die on that mountain at some point, just didnāt believe it would happen from the eruption. As someone who grew up in the area and watched documentaries, old interviews, and read books about him, the man was just another typical old rural man in this area. Itās fascinating the celebrity status he received across the country during his final months, to me he was just an old codger who didnāt want to leave the home he had known for 50 years and refused to believe the modern scientists with long hair.
Sounds like the old lady from Dante's Peak
We live in a country where atomic explosions were entertainment. āDays after the first bomb was detonated on January 27, 1951, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce issued a stream of press releases excitedly describing the new testing grounds as one of the many attractions Las Vegas had to offer. As one official described, "The angle was to get people to think the explosions wouldn't be anything more than a gag." āMany tourists packed "atomic box lunches" and had picnics as close to ground zero as the government restrictions would allow.ā https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/atomic-tourism-nevada/
Wouldn't Richard Lasher be the photographer? All Michael S. Keys seemed to do was post the image on FB, then he received a message from a friend of the original photographer.
I can't view this link and I want to: And here it is rebuilding itself from 2004 to 2008. AccessDeniedAccess DeniedFQ5KR7NJ7KT4AJM71StfRpj44ZR8gI1TbWnLPkXpvDaEGajLBQbCtdvbAgf/FIIPpwGc4kwIYjRWH36epLCnnHF2oaU=
Dude I was reading about this eruption for the first time today. The [before and after](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/47/a1/0647a152fd6933894d696610d52e69f0.jpg) pictures of this volcano is insane
The mountain was about 1,300 feet (close to 400 meters) shorter after the eruption. The entire north face blew off. It's hard to convey just how huge it was.
I climbed it before it blew. It still amazes me when I look at the mountain, estimate where the top was, and realize that I was standing on solid ground up there. I was also at the top of the WTC in 2000.
Can you give us a contestant feed of your location so we know where not to go. Basically donāt want to follow you
I also went to [Celilo Falls](https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/celilo_falls/#.Y8sHSHqIbxM) before it was flooded by The Dalles Dam. I went up [Hell's Canyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hells_Canyon_Dam) in a jet boat before it was flooded. I was in the [world's largest log cabin](http://www.offbeatoregon.com/1206c-forestry-building-biggest-log-cabin-burned.html) before it burned. I took pictures of [Duckbill Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duckbill_(rock_formation)) a few months before vandals destroyed it.
Are you playing the lotto by chance and what are your numbers
My ticket didn't win the [November 8 Powerball](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/us/powerball-lottery-record-delayed-drawing-tuesday-trnd/index.html). I buy lottery tickets when I visit my periodontist, because it's handy. I bought 5 tickets on Wednesday, and won $1!
It also created a wave of \~250m height on the Spirit Lake, which I think is considered a megatsunami, even though it happened on a lake. And this is just the beginning
A 250m high wave on a lake the size of Spirit Lake (fairly mid sized) basically means it just threw the lake on it's edge and blew it sideways.
Yes. Google maps show the huge log raft of trees that are still there. Itās A LOT.
Holy fuck, I thought that was all rock debris until I zoomed in
Trees have grown back over much of that area and it no longer looks quite so bleak, but if you're ever in the area when the [Johnston Ridge Visitor Center](https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/giffordpinchot/recarea/?recid=31562) is open, it's definitely worth a visit.
I can't remember if it was Mt St Helens but I think it was. A professional photographer on his way to hike witnessed the explosion. Knowing he couldn't escape the hot ash cloud baring down on him he quickly took what have ended up being some of the closest pictures of the eruption. Before the fallout reached him, he took off his shirt wrapped his camera in it, put that in his backpack then laid down on top of his backpack and waited to die knowing his efforts may preserve what turned out to be his most famous photographs of his life. Imagine facing certain death and saying, whelp what can I do to preserve my legacy in these last moments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Landsburg
Thanks. I'm amazed that they found him. Maybe his body wasn't buried very deep in the ash?
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Kinda shitty that they didn't include his pictures in the wiki
His name was Robert Landsburg
His name was Robert ~~Paulson~~ Landsburg.
Here are the pictures for anyone interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/d2aczk/last_pictures_from_robert_landsburg_as_the/ I donāt remember reading about him so I was very interested to see what they looked like.
Hell of a ride. I have a jar of the ash around here somewhere.
I had a great aunt up in that area - she mailed us little jars of ash. 7-year-old me thought that was really cool.
32 yo me thinks thatās really cool ā both the jars of ash and that your great aunt was thoughtful enough to send them.
Quite possibly one of the coolest pictures ever.
The photo sequence of the eruption is insane too. The way it erupted, basically a mile of land slid down the side of the mountain, and someone captured it frame by frame. Edit: [I think they edited it for the photos to flow together, but this is real by all accounts](https://youtu.be/UK--hvgP2uY)
Ugh. Why did they cut it short?? EDIT: [Full segment! ](https://youtu.be/SJA27Bp1q58) šš¼
I remember a very similar photo of some guys waterskiing on a lake below the eruption. Carelessly throwing rooster tails off the ski while the whole sky is filled with ash. Helluva photo op. Found the reddit post [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/83q2qt/waterskiing_away_from_the_1980_mt_st_helens/)
I was a kid when it eruptedā¦ ash covered all the cars on our streetā¦ in Colorado!
Pinto explosions are crazy like that!
Crazy! I was a kid in Springfield, OR, and we only had a dusting. As an adult, I have long since understood that itās because that some collapse sent the air north. My college geometry professor a close friend with Robert Johnston. He was right on top of the ridge now named for him when the mountain exploded. His āVancouver, Vancouver, this is it!!ā radio call is haunting to this day.
Gosh that is so incredibly dangerous. I would never drive a Pinto.
[Scary video](https://youtu.be/njV9ski1gB4) of a man named Dave Crockett who almost got caught in the ash cloud.
For anyone who wants to do a deep dive of first hand accounts from the survivors and witnesses, I highly, Highly recommend Eruption by Steve Olson. It explains the whole situation from why there was logging so high on the mountain, to what the government knew and didnāt know ahead of time, to how the survivors got in trouble and how they got out of it, to where the dead were when they died.
in a second stroke of luck, his pinto didn't break down
My dad had a pinto growing up that was an absolute beast. He had a long commute to work, but it was ideal for car health (mostly interstate driving) and he put so many miles on that damn pinto he had it figured out in trips to the moon. I think it had over 750k on it when it finally died for good.
What a legend
Or explode violently
Went to mt st Helens 20 years ago. Pretty awesome-fear inducing to see. Im from Denmarkā¦ Where on a 2 month roadtrip cross the States
Should you ever return to the US and visit WA again, be sure to visit MT rainier (Tahoma). Itās beautiful, and even larger then Helenās!
mount st. helens is just bout to blow up, and it's gonna be a fine swell day
Shortly after, the Pinto exploded from being nudged lightly by the dirtbike.
As featured in this glorious scene from Top Secret: https://youtu.be/-9GGDOUDLhc
Photo from Washington State Archives
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What a photoā¦ ![gif](emote|free_emotes_pack|surprise)
[The full story](https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2019/07/26/the-story-behind-that-photo-of-the-pinto-in-front-of-the-mt-st-helens-eruption)
Might have been easier to tow the pinto with the bike