Mount St. Helens: The Turmoil of Creation Continues - 1989

A documentary from 1989 focusing on before, during, and after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. After eruption sequences include the unexpected comeback of plant and animal life in the blast zone, the impact on lives downstream from the volcano, and the scientists and researchers studying St. Helens' next moves.
Even after some 30 years, this video remains one of the best on Mount St. Helens. Shout out to narrator Michael Rye for having one of the most calming voices I've ever heard. The music's pretty good, too.
#MountStHelens #MtStHelens #Volcano #Eruption #1980 #WashingtonState #VHS #Geology #WashingtonHistory

[@altheacraig2904]

I lived in Kent, WA when Mt ST. Helens exploded. I went there several years later after the Memorial was built with my son Kelly and his family. It is truly awesome! I sent for information on all of our volcanos from the USGS in Vancouver, WA. From these papers, I learned that St Helens has blown up way more than all the rest of our mountains put together. I learned from a geology professor named Nick Zentner at the Central Washington University, on the internet, that all the volcanos on the west coast are there because of the Cascadia Subduction Zone that is about 66 miles off our coast and about 700 miles from Vancouver Island in the north to Cape Mendocino, CA in the south. This is so fascinating to me! I am 85 as of January 3rd, 2022, and believe me, you are never too old to learn "new" things!

[@Marco-fn6kg]

Keep on learning keeps you young! and Nick is the best !!

[@fluffythe_husky]

St helens is also the youngest volcano amongst the cascades!

[@JuliusCaesar888]

You didnt do any of that stop lying.

[@killlr0y]

​​​@@JuliusCaesar888 go look for ditch

[@gitane1976]

At 41:41, we can see a woman with a red hat descending the volcano with difficulty. That's Katia Krafft, a french volcanologist, who died 11 years after this tragedy, along with her husband Maurice and another guy, Harry Glicken. Glicken was with David Johnston just a few days before the eruption. He took the famous photo where we see him smiling while sitting on a chair the day before the blast. Glicken had to leave at the end of the day for Vancouver, WA for a family affair. He and the two volcanologists died at Mount Unzen in June 1991, when a pyroclastic flow engulfed them as they were standing at the bottom of the mountain. Nobody expected such a sudden event, but they knew that something was going to happen.

[@chipsdad5861]

This is crazy that you knew these people. I have heard about all of these people. They died doing what they loved and trying to save others, RIP.

[@julianyc422]

Stunning, these Men's life work was for the benefit of All and they gave their lives for it.

[@community1949]

This program is beautifully put together, beautiful filming, poetic descriptions, and I love the narator's voice too.

[@shortech]

This is one of the most pleasant videos I've ever watched, even considering the subject matter.

[@Ccyawn123]

I think it's pleasant as well

[@karinjacka7422]

And yet when I visited, animals and plants were slowly showing up….life is amazing in its resilience…it is humbling

[@cecelia1350]

David Johnston was a hero, giving his life, fighting local politicians to save lives.

[@community1949]

This eruption opened the door to deep knowledge of what happens during and after a volcano erupts - geologists used to think the details they found took centuries to develop. But after Mt. Saint Helen's erupted they found out it only takes seconds to do the damage they found at ancient eruptions - so in a way this was a blessing.

[@Dee-jq2ob]

Never forget the view from our living room in 1980, we didn't really comprehend what was happening, just this massive cloud going up. Obviously we saw it before the news broke and thankfully 60 miles away.

[@Lurker1979]

Like this Documentary. No hyping. Just the history and that is it.

[@jamesmurray8558]

It has been 43 years since the eruption. It is like yesterday to me.I was stationed at the Cle Elm Ranger Station on that morning, 8:30 a.m. the call, Mt.St.Helens has erupted. All park and forest personal are to clear the park.I heard the young man call and died. He was never founded. How it got dark and stayed dark for days.I will never forget.

[@seanbaskett5506]

I can't believe you posted this video. I bought this as a 7 year old at the visitor center in 1990 (the old one in the valley) and damn near wore the vhs out, and it got ruined. Then here I am goofing around tonight and that weird 1988 synth sound yanks me right back into childhood. I was sure what I was clicking on was something I'd never seen before. F***ing brilliant!

[@James-mz7tv]

We would get along very well. Lol. This could have come from my own hand, in fact I even checked the name to be sure I hadn't wrote it years earlier. Not just because we both loved this at age seven and got it from the visitor center, but because of how you describe what it does to you now, and the marvel and bittersweet fondness for its unchanging compo. The not altogether unhappy or displeasing idea that it's still here, unchanged, while you have grown around it, changing all the time and wishing for those days gone by before you perceived of such things. To just enjoy a thing like a kid again, and not be judged for the want of it. Then again, I am constantly burdened by the pangs of yearning, the wistful melancholia & emptiness lingering together to form a profound sense of hiraeth, a Welsh concept, which feels good, but overall, but yet it also hurts to know one can never go backwards, only ever forward. We can never be seven again with our tape and our imaginations. We can see it in a child of our own, if we had them, but we can never know again the feeling of being there ourselves. Just a neurotic little thought from a like-minded person.

[@seanbaskett5506]

@@James-mz7tv I suspect you would be correct on that!

[@seanbaskett5506]

@@James-mz7tv Nothing neurotic said there, my friend.

[@mousetreehouse6833]

This is a great video - thank you! It is so well made, but I had to take a break due to sensory overload ( that's a compliment - 😀!). I was moving to Cape Cod when we got the ash from the eruption. I remember watching it from Route 6, it gave the sky a weird sort of orange-y and sickly look, like when we get a hurricane. My regards to the people who went through this unprecedented disaster. Even something as big and impersonal as a volcano can become deeply personal when it attaches to the human psyche, then it becomes much more...

[@fandoria09]

It's hard to believe it's been 42 years that she erupted. I was 9 years old, living in the Ohio Valley when we saw a pink sky, red sunrise, and sunset for many days.

[@Brinah]

55:47, I love the music with the flowers!

[@YorkVid]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3zVlJp_aqmlg5Y&ab_channel=GrahamPreskett-Topic

[@Brinah]

Thank you!

[@jeddronet1918]

This Louisiana man wants to see the mountain before my time is up.

[@mmarlow6697]

I’m from Louisiana as well but I just retired from the Army and live in Washington because my fiancée is still on active duty. I was just at Mt St Helens 2 days ago. It is absolute beautiful, I wholeheartedly recommend that you experience St Helens along with Mt Rainier and the Olympic mountains. The entire state of Washington is beautiful. From my house I can see Mt Rainier and the Olympic Mountains and I’m only about 1 1/2 hours from St Helens...

[@grindupBaker]

I had a day trip there summer 1984 to some high point to the east, driving in through a valley that had upright trees on both sides, then suddenly snapped flat trees on both sides all pointing east, then just tree stumps. Moonscape after that.

[@silvereagle2061]

RIP David and Harry.

[@patrickcross1571]

I came to Mt St Helens for the first time when I was about 8 on a family trip, before I wholly knew the story of the volcano and what had happened. It was… surreal. Seeing a mountain with a gigantic hole in it where the rest of the mountain used to be. And then a chaparral/moonscape with only the lightest dusting of shrubs and grasses growing amid a plain of mud and ash, where there had once been a standing forest with trees as tall as buildings.

[@aprilrichards762]

I have this on VHS!! My mum got it for me when she went there in 1989!

[@cheezit2989]

Love the sound effects. Especially the intro

[@garyoconnordbaairrepair7775]

The eruption happened on a cousin’s 23rd birthday. Does not seem like it had been 40 years since Mt. St. Helens woke up.

[@chloehennessey6813]

3:37 The amount of force it took to knock down whole swaths of forest like that. Geesus.

[@lickkittysplit3871]

I remember watching this in Science Class. 8th grade Mr. Brungs Thanks for sharing. It was wonderful to relive my childhood again!!!

[@nala3038]

Love this video! Also, I still have the VHS tape.

[@timothybrown1867]

Very nice documentary!

[@BushyHairedStranger]

The intro soundscape alone has me reaching for my bottle of pure LSD!! Thanks Sounds from another dimension!

[@debraives4741]

I lived in Thurston County, when Mt. St.. Helen's erupted.

[@NoName01972]

I love these old documentaries, creepy music, the sound effects of howling wind while no dust is being kicked up from the microfine ash all over the place, what's not to enjoy? All kidding aside, good documentary.

[@BushyHairedStranger]

Weyerheauser took advantage of the millions of board feet the 1980 eruption “provided” to a massive degree. Loggers changed out 5-7 chains on their saw a day cutting the “salvage” timber.

[@Patrick-ih9cp]

I would likely to know, how much did Weyeraheauser lose, and spend to build back and hire people.

[@laurabunyard8562]

Research done on lava from several eruptions show that the less gas in the magma, the quieter the eruption, and when will the next big eruption be? When the gas builds up again. That is all a volcanic eruption is. Releasing the gas. Earthquakes occur when forward movement resumes.

[@AngelCintiaRockgirl]

By the time I went to see St Helens, 90% of the trees were gone. It was like a hilly desert in the middle of the Northwest rainforests.

[@Robz82001]

Very solid doc.

[@R.E.A.P]

i live 35 miles away,what a site.........at one particular stop along the way you can see 4 other volcanoes.

[@MarylandGuy-ey3st]

Yea Mt Rainier and Mt Hood I don’t know the other two off the top of my head

[@R.E.A.P]

@@MarylandGuy-ey3st Jefferson and adams

[@georgemitchell9222]

I was in Montana when she blew and the next day I went into town and cleaned up some business in town

[@steelcityterps]

still go every chance I get

[@ogs1mpson609]

Gotta love 80s synthesizer jams

[@YorkVid]

Yeah, there's some good stuff on this one.

[@ogs1mpson609]

YorkVid I’m pretty sure the stranger things theme was made on the same synth.

[@steveforbes9302]

RIP all the poor animals that lost their lives.

[@nala3038]

And the humans too

[@chiasanzes9770]

​@@nala3038only humans there I feel sorry IS Harry Truman.

[@marlisamorgan2]

The 'LEGEND' Harry Truman 🙏🙏😇🤗🙏🙏

[@lcb027]

Dr. Leonard Palmer, from Portland State University, was talking about St. Helens when everyone was looking at Mt. Baker. Dr. Palmer on March 25 1980 predicted Mt. St. Helens would erupt in the Next 4 Days. 2 USGS Bureaucrats sent out by Jimmy Carter held a press conference to tell everyone that Mt. St. Helens would not erupt before the end of the Century. (Donald Mullineaux was one of those two) Their comments appeared in the Seattle P.I. the morning of March 27 1980. (the day that the crater appeared - AFTER a MAJOR BOOM!) By Late April Dr. Palmer was predicting a Catastrophic Occurrence BEFORE July - and recommended that the Red Zone be expanded by 18 miles NORTH of the mountain and by 10 miles east and west. He referred to the Red Zone as being Political not Scientific. The USGS Bureaucrats were still telling people anything big was Years away. It was like watching a Bad Hollywood Script - the one guy who kept getting everything Right was ignored and drowned out by the More Reasonable Minds. Every time I hear one of these Narrators on one of these documentaries say "No One could have Predicted..." "No One could have guessed..." et. al. I think to myself, Dr. Palmer predicted, Dr. Palmer knew, but no one (save local papers) was listening to him.

[@YorkVid]

+lcb027 Completely agree. If you watch the Northwest Reports 10th anniversary documentary on my channel, Dr. Palmer is on there and repeats the same things. Talked about the north side of the mountain reaching the breaking point due to the bulge and how scientists and others didn't just acknowledge the obvious. Here's the link - kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZmHaq5ibgLmta9k Also, the new book about St. Helens By Steve Olson, "Eruption," confirms what everyone already knew about the influence that Weyerhaeuser had on dictating the boundaries of the zones and how Gov. Ray didn't listen to local authorities and their concerns.

[@lcb027]

+CKDTA I just remember when there was attention being paid to Mt. Baker in like August/September of 79, I read an article in the Kent News Journal about Dr. Palmer saying that the real attention should be focused on Mt. St. Helens - there were rumblings deep in the ground under St. Helens. There were several other articles leading up to March when on the 25th he predicted the eruption. I also remember that the Response from Mulineaux was in the Seattle P.I. (who never ran a single story about what Palmer had been saying.)

[@jhengbelicario8426]

lcb027

[@grindupBaker]

Say what. Why is everyone looking at Mt. Baker ? Is there something I should know before my next bicycle ride ?

[@lcb027]

In late 1979 Mt. Baker started venting jets of steam on the southern and eastern face of the mountain.

[@Guitcad1]

They should have gotten Orson Welles to narrate this. Edit: Oops! 1989. A couple of years too late.

[@markviereck4547]

It’s amazing how windy it was up in that airplane.. couldn’t hear the engine, only the wind. Maybe it was a glider.

[@Skier10]

Yes that was taken from the “volcano wind-glider”, a plane Boeing developed in 1981 featuring stealth engine technology so wind sounds around the volcano could be specifically studied

[@GrahameGould]

Thanks for this. Great documentary, but it was weird to watch a scientist smash a pole into the ground with a sledgehammer while the narrator refers to scientists monitoring with "sensitive instruments"! :-D

[@ZhmiKnopa]

It made me chuckle 😂 Interesting to see gas bubble out of the ground though.

[@kathyborthwick6738LakotaEmoji]

We woke up to ash all over Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada 🍁

[@BrotherMichaeloftheCross]

There were large clearcut areas felled by loggers. If you got on top of the ridges you could see. Wilderness was at risk; the mountain simply was more comprehensive in destroying trees and habitat.

[@whoever6458]

I have found that beautiful things are always also dangerous.

[@yoadrian8496]

Had Jurassic Park come out in 1989 these scientists would have know that "life finds a way."

[@VanishedPNW]

The book did. 1989. Idk if that line was in the novel tho. Highly recommend that book, btw. Movie is awesome and so is the novel.

[@We_Seek_Truth]

I'm get so frustrated when I see those clips of Harry X. Truman speaking so boldly about his northeast side and Spirit Lake area being the SAFE side. EVERYONE minimized the possiblity of a lateral eruption. I know, hindsight is 20/20, but as the bulge got bigger and bigger, it was a warning sign. They had two full months of warnings!! Volcanoes always have scared me since i was a child in the the 60s and learned about Pompeii, Krakatoa, and Tambora in school. That was BEFORE we learned about Yellowstone and Campi Flegrei and other SUPERvolcanoes!!

[@coreym162]

Harry was done dirty with his legacy. They just wanna use him as a morality tale rather than learn what he knew when he learned it. We look at him after the fact but, he was a victim of a broken indecisive system to form earlier opinions. The authorities were either lying or didn't know what was going on either. His last interviews he knew the volcano would go off and he'd be a goner if he stayed. He just didn't care and grown tired of the officials saying "will it? won't it?" and constantly changing the situation before getting their stories straight to tell the public. He grew old and tired and said the devastation after the eruption would kill him in 10 days anyway if he evacuated so, what was the point? He was 83 and lost his wife a few years prior and was a broken man and didn'want to lose the land he buried her on and the life they built too. He made a promise to her that he would die on the land they built their life on. So, he chose to go out on his terms. Everyone was defiant of his wishes and endangered themselves rather than him endangering everyone else. They knew he didn't want to leave and should have left it at that. David was no rebel either but, was a hero in that he stuck to his guns on the obvious bulge when everyone else was passing around responsibility. These 2 men were only human and stood for what they believed in. That gets mucked up with media sensationalism and spinning a narrative for ratings.

[@fandoria09]

Who could blame him for not wanting to leave. It was a place he and his wife built together, and where he laid his wife and daughter to rest.

[@alexandermichael117]

We heard of it's eruption here in the UK and got some of the ash.

[@necomeirinho]

a natureza é SABIA. NADA SE PERDE. TUDO SE TRANSFORMA.. ASSIM SEJA....

[@ericnelson1620]

People assumed no concrete predictions = I’m safe

[@kirkkirkland7244]

Some day all the mountains and the islands will be moved out of their places!!! That will be a awesome day!!!

[@user-ik8si6ks7s]

I work in Yellowstone.

[@dudley5658]

When the goats were rounded up they were told we’re from the government and we’re here to help.

[@DavidHuber63]

scrap the fancy hardware, when Earth shakes and the Mountain opens under pressure is when.

[@julianyc422]

untouched? it was being deforested 100 of acres at a time.

[@michaelmcneil4959]

How does recovery suit the science of evolution?

[@Patrick-ih9cp]

GOD

[@JanaTeague-r3c]

Garcia Deborah Martinez George Garcia Christopher

[@tkskagen]

St. Helens is still full of life as well as Mt. Rainer... But sadly, we dismiss thi activity...

[@stormytooman1947]

I quit watching at 5 min. - too much weird music.

[@edwinmalachy]

The eruption destroyed the mountain

[@ianh8039]

It did?? Really?? 🤔

[@nala3038]

Thanks for stating the obvious

[@Cinerary]

Very observant

[@nala3038]

Thanks captain obvious

[@Skier10]

It also took down many trees!

[@DavidHuber63]

God doesn't play. ❤️🙏

[@Chellz801]

Also doesn’t exist

[@DavidHuber63]

@@Chellz801 I will tell Him you said that 🙏🏽

[@nala3038]

@@Chellz801incorrect

[@quantumpotential7639]

Thar she blows! The force of nature renders the loins of man weak. Those gohpers are like nature's roto tillars. They should level the mountain, shove a giant man made pipe down into the vent and use it turn giant electric generators. Then build lucious green golf courses all over the park for the gophers. Then re shoot caddy shack. Just saying.

[@GrahameGould]

Brilliant! Lava gophers.

[@JamesWlos-xk2mo]

MAN MADE DISASTER ☠️

[@kathyborthwick6738LakotaEmoji]

The music is horrific!

[@bjones6109]

We have volcanoes. It's part of living on the Earth. If we didn't have volcanoes we also wouldn't have land. If you don't like volcanoes find a planet with no volcanoes AND LEAVE!

[@jamiemoffatt50]

Them leaving the millions of trees in spirit lake is the dumbest thing ever!

[@Skier10]

So what’s your proposal for them oh wise one? And are you going to pay for it?

[@fandoria09]

It costs $ to remove waterlogged wood from a lake that size, not to mention removing a lot more from the bottom and then taking away the home from the fish, frogs and beavers who make that waterlogged wood their home.

[@EskimoCanadian44]

The lake is being left to recover on its own. This includes leaving the leftover log mat.