Mount St Helens Research Paper

Mount St. Helens is a volcano that is located in the state of Washington. This paper will provide an overview on the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens that happened in May of 1980. This paper will also cover how this eruption affected the Earth, the damages and death tolls of this eruption, the economic impact, and any permanent consequences.

Eruption of Mount St. Helens

According to History – Mt. St. Helens (n.d.), approximately at 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake happened about one mile underneath Mount St. Helens. Which in turn triggered Mount St. Helens to erupt without any warning. This caused the largest debris avalanche in the Earth’s recorded history. This debris avalanche caused a blast that traveled outwards

at over 300 miles per hour. The devastation area stretched nineteen miles east to west and twelve miles north from the volcano (History – Mt. St. Helens, n.d.).
How Did This Eruption Affect the Earth?
According to Lindsey (n.d.), when Mount St. Helens erupted, it was kind of like opening a champagne bottle: hot rocks, ash, gas, and steam exploded upward and outward. The outward blast spread the volcanic debris over approximately 230 miles and blew down 4 billion feet of timber. A raft of dead trees drifted around Spirit Lake in Washington. All around the southern half of the mountain, volcanic mudflows poured down through rivers and gullies. Recovery for this eruption didn’t start happening until the late 1980’s and it began in the farthest part away from the volcano. Ten years later the Spirit Lake terrain started to recover and by now most of this area is coming back to life (Lindsey, n.d.).
Death Tolls
According to Smith (1998, May), in 2000 the Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center placed in plaque in the grove trees located on their grounds in memory of the victims of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Fifty-seven names are etched into that plaque, these are the people that lost their lives to the eruption of Mount St. Helens. They were loggers, campers, reporters, and scientists. In the beginning, there were thirty-six victims brought out of the eruption area. After all the searching, rescues and recoveries, there were still a lot of people who were never found. By the third week after the eruption twenty-five people were confirmed dead and forty-seven were still missing, and only fifteen of those missing people were found alive. Four of the victims were known to be inside the restricted areas that had been set up by the federal and local governments. One of them was a man named David Johnston; he was only five miles from the volcano and was the one that reported the volcano erupting. The second was a man named Harry Truman who refused to leave his lodge at Spirit Lake. Then there were volcanologists Bob Kaseweter and Beverly Wetherald, who had been taking readings at Spirit Lake when the volcano erupted. Some of the other victims were as far as thirteen miles from the volcano, and some were in areas that were considered “safe” (Smith, 1998 May).
The Economic Impact
According to Bagley (2013, Feb. 28), in terms of economic impact, the Mount St. Helens eruption was the most destructive in United States history. Fifty-seven people are known to have died. More than 200 homes were destroyed. More than 185 miles of roads were destroyed and fifteen miles of railways were damaged. Sewage ways were clogged up with ash, cars and building were damaged, and air traffic was temporarily shut down in the Northwest. The International Trade Commission estimated damages to timber, civil works, and agriculture to be about 1.1 billion dollars. Then Congress approved a 950 million dollar emergency fund to be set up for the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and the Small Business Administration so they could help with recovery efforts (Bagley, 2013 Feb. 28).
Any Permanent Consequences
According to Long Term Effects (n.d.), the agriculture around the United States was also affected after the eruption of Mount St.

Helens. As much as twelve percent of the total crops were destroyed by the ash debris nationwide. Local farmland was affected significantly; almost all of the crops and livestock that were located in the valleys at the foot of the volcano were destroyed by the floodwaters, pyroclastic flows, and lahars, which seeped down the volcano. The higher than usual damage in those valleys is thought to be due to the high concentrations of the farmland, drawn by the fertile volcanic soil. A lot of the surrounding natural vegetation was destroyed also; sections of forests were either burnt away by the pyroclastic flows or washed away when Spirit Lake flooded. Two hundred and fifty square kilometers of forest were wiped away. Rivers were filled with sediment, which include streams filled with salmon and trout. Since most of the rivers and streams were filled it destroyed most of the local drainage system, which caused a much greater risk of flooding in this area (Long Term Effects, n.d.). Permanent consequences that resulted from this eruption include the wildlife and tree life around this area would never be the same again. Nobody knows what kinds of animals were living in that area that might have died when this volcano erupted. There were so many things that scientists had yet to discover in those areas that they won’t be able to discover

now.
Mount St. Helens is a volcano that is located in the state of Washington. This paper provided an overview of the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens that happened in May of 1980. This paper also covered how this eruption affected the Earth, the damages and death tolls of this eruption, the economic impact, and any permanent consequences of this eruption.