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Having experienced the original Mt. St. Helens blast first hand, I think I'll chime in here. I lived 35 miles from it, down river in Longview, hiked, camped, and hunted the area extensively, and my mom at the time worked in the hospital operating room. Volcanos don't match up with any other natural event. Prepare to be "blown away" when you experience one first-hand. 1. Ash mixed with water does NOT produce concrete. Ash is finely ground rock, the consistency of talcum powder. Rock mixed with water does not produce concrete. It IS however VERY difficult to move once it settles. Hard pan clay is easier to move than settled out ash. Once some air is mixed in with the ash it is easy to move around, but the air tends to vent out within a short amount of time. Watering it down doeas the same thing. That's probably where the idea came that the a***urns to concrete. 2. You'll have LOTS of warnings before a volcano blasts. They don't go from dead quiet to temper tantrums, they work up a good bit of rage before they let loose. The smart folks get out of their way, the dumb ones stand around and watch. Lost a friend that way. Her and her friend were camping in a "blue zone", where they said is not a good place to be, but we won't forcibly remove you. 3. Generally death is FAST when a volcano lets loose close up. People died sitting in lawn chairs. They were found sitting upright with ash packed into EVERY orifice of their body. There was a very large herd of elk that had to be put down because they were blinded and had their hair singed pretty badly. Not a pretty sight. They were a bit further away when she blew. 4. There is NOTHING that can prevent mechanical damage to equipment operating in the ash. We replaced engine air filters weekly, and changed the oil and oil filter weekly. Windshields were shot after the summer. They looked fine during the day but you couldn't see through them at night from all the scratches that were ground in by the windshield wipers. People re-plumbed their car engines so the intake air was drawn from the passenger compartment (cleaner air), which helped a bit. A lot of engines were toast after a couple of years. One airliner was dumb enough to fly through the original ash cloud. He was the last one to do it. His windshield and engines were sandblasted and he had to land on instruments. 5. Volcanos are more powerful than anything you can imagine. When St. Helens blew in 1980, it was a fairly mild event in her life. A 50 megaton blast spewing about 3/4 or a cubic mile of ash. There was a smaller mountain north of her that she cut right off. The top was not pushed over, it was cut off. The remains of it were NOT pushed to the back side, but blown completely away. It was cut like it was butter and St. Helens used a hot knife. 6. While the ash is sterile when it first comes out, you can grow stuff in it after a couple of years. Geologists were surprised at how fast mother nature started to re-grow. 7. Flooding is a major problem after a heavy ash fall, even if you have no pyroclastic flows. The Cowlitz river was at low-flow, but the river bottom filled with a***hat ran off the hills. The delta that formed in the Columbia river raised the river 2 feet in Portland, Oregon, which is amazing when you consider the size and flow rate of the Columbia. The Corps of Engineers started their larged dredging operation in history to clean out the rivers before the riny season hit. As I remember it they had 14 dredges operating 24/7 that entire summer cleaning out the rivers. You could see one dredge from the other one. People had their fields raised over 30 feet in some areas from the dredge spoils. I know one guy that had his 40 acres raised 30 feet. His view of his fields from his home turned his home from living on a hill to living in a small canyon! 8. Within a year or two nature will secure most all of the ash so it's not causing the grief it was, anchoring it down with water and plants. 9. It Yellowstone starts to seriously act up I think I'll take a long vacation in some place far up-wind from her, like either Hawaii or Alaska. California may be too close for comfort. Even Florida could be dow-stream, not a good place to be. As for the MR industry? When you've evacuated what could have been complete destruction, who cares? Maybe 5 or 10 years afterwards I'd care, but not any time soon. As long as the wife and kids are healthy, all is good. Mark in Utah
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