Twenty years ago a massive blast sideways from Mount St. Helens vaporized forests in five thousand degree heat, flattened hundreds of miles of timberland, and killed 57 people, many of whom vanished beneath tons of ash." We first thought it was a forest fire or something; then all of a sudden, we realized it was the mountain."" And you could see it churning churning and boiling, and you can actually hear it, just kind of a rumble. So we were actually right under it." Scientists who watched it blow now say the eruption began with a modest earthquake enough to loosen the already unstable mountainside." And that released the pressure that was holding the molten rock inside the volcano and then a number of seconds after, they observed the beginning of the landslide, they saw the first ash cloud come out and the big explosions begin. Mt. Mt. St. Helens stunned scientists with its ferocity; so much so it is now the most studied volcano in the world." The events on May 18 involved an earthquake, a landslide, a horizontally directed explosion, a vertically directed explosion. And the resulting deposits are immensely complicated." Scientists rush to Mt. St. Helens in the spring of 1980 to study what was then just a rumbling mountain. Lipman's fellow scientist and friend David Johnston died in the blast.
