Forty-five years ago this spring, the eruption of Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington captured the attention of the nation and dominated the airwaves for weeks.
Several scientists from Illinois were at or near the site and helped contribute to the understanding of the eruption, the worst in American history.
The blast, at 8:32 a.m. local time on Sunday, May 18, 1980, was estimated at 1,600 times stronger than the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima in August 1945.
Mount St. Helens had been dormant since 1857, but beginning in mid-March 1980, a string of small earthquakes and releases of steam indicated that a major blast was imminent. The eruption demolished the north side of the mountain, cutting the height of Mount St. Helens from 9,677 to 8,363 feet and unleashing catastrophic landslides and mud flows.
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Massive amounts of ash from the blast darkened much of the Pacific Northwest. Some 540 million tons of ash blanketed an area of 22,000 square miles around the site.
Fifty-seven people died from the eruption, while thousands of animals also perished, and over 4 billion board feet of timber were lost. Overall, the event resulted in over $1 billion in damage. It was the first eruption in the continental U.S. since a smaller one at Lassen Peak in California in 1915.
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The cataclysmic 1980 event had some Illinois connections, starting with David A. Johnston, a volcanologist who was the first to record a radio transmission of the eruption. Popular and well-respected, Johnston was one of the most visible scientists at the site and has become synonymous with the event.
The 30-year-old Johnston, who was born in Chicago and grew up in Oak Lawn, earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Illinois in 1971.
Johnston later earned a master’s and doctorate from the University of Washington and studied volcanoes across Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. In 1978, he became part of the United States Geological Survey.
As Mount St. Helens emitted its first earthquakes in March 1980, Johnston persuaded his mentor at the University of Washington, Stephen Malone, to send him there. Johnston became the first geologist at the site and helped lead members of the press closer to the mountain.
Seconds after the main blast on May 18, Johnston radioed his fellow scientists at the USGS, “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it! Vancouver, is the transmitter on?” He was never heard from again, and his body was never found.
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In 1981, a USGS report wrote that “among the many contributors of data, none was more essential” than Johnston, whose “insights and his thoroughly scientific attitude were crucial to the entire effort; they still serve as a model for us all.” He was one of several University of Illinois graduates and staffers who studied the lead-up to the eruption and the aftermath.
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As Mount St. Helens exploded, a pair of geologists who were both Illinois natives, Keith and Dorothy Brown Stoffel, were flying over the mountain in a single-engine Cessna.
Keith Stoffel was born in Belleville, while Dorothy was from Carbondale. The couple was from Spokane, Washington, where they still reside.
They had received approval from the USGS to make a pass over the mountain on the morning of May 18. The Stoffels, along with their 23-year-old pilot, were above Mount St. Helens when the north side “pulverized” before them, as Dorothy told the Southern Illinoisan.
“Probably the entire north face of the mountain blew away,” she said. “We neither heard it or felt it. We just saw it.”
The Southern Illinoisan reported that the explosion led to “several awesome and terrifying minutes” as they “raced for their lives against [the] overwhelming ash cloud” in the plane. Their risky efforts gave scientists the “first close-up account of a volcanic explosion.”
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Most of the ash that wrapped the Northwest in darkness never made it to Illinois. The Rock Island Argus reported that an ozone advisory issued for the Quad Cities on May 21 had “little correlation” to the ash, according to a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Moline.
While it was “not likely” that Quad Cities residents could “see the volcanic ash with the naked eye,” the meteorologist said that “the lighter particles could be blown around for a few years” and that any rain that mixed with the ash would cause a “muddy discolored film on objects outside.”
Some, however, pointed to a moderate agricultural benefit from the light amounts of ash falling in the state. Robert Nelson, a geologist from Illinois State University, told United Press International that the ash contained “soluble potassium” that served to fertilize the soil.
“In the long term, it could be beneficial,” said Nelson. “There will be a measurable amount of potassium as [the ash] breaks down.”
He noted that the amount of ash that had fallen in Illinois was “very, very light,” with the most coming on May 22, four days after the eruption.
The benefits, though, were long-term, as Nelson said that “finer particles” could remain in the atmosphere for five to six years. He added that Midwestern soil had reaped the rewards of other volcanic episodes from the western United States thousands of years before, though the Mount St. Helens ash was not enough “to replace a regular program of applying potassium fertilizer.”
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Smaller eruptions continued from Mount St. Helens for weeks afterward, while others were recorded periodically from 1989-91. There was also activity from the mountain from October 2004 through January 2008.
The mountain is one of a surprising number of active volcanoes in the continental United States. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 12 states have volcanoes that are considered active, led by Alaska, which is home to over half of the 169 active volcanoes in the nation.
California is next with 18, followed by Oregon with 17. Mount St. Helens is one of seven active volcanoes in Washington, while Hawaii, a state commonly associated with volcanic activity, actually has only five.
Other states with active volcanoes include Utah and Idaho (four each), New Mexico (three), Arizona and Nevada (two each), and Colorado and Wyoming (one each).
• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Illinois. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.