Mount St. Helens, 35 years ago, May 14, 1980

From the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS):

Mount St. Helens, 35 years ago, May 14, 1980. The Columbian newspaper’s Steve Small flies to the Coldwater I observation post. The site lies outside the red zone but only 8 miles from Mount St. Helens. Photographer Reid Blackburn has been here a week. Blackburn is using two borrowed Nikon F2A cameras from Nikon Professional Services – motor drives, 250-exposure filmbacks, autofocus and autoexposure lenses. He uses a transmitter to shoot frames and jots notes to a log.

“You okay till the weekend?” asks Small.

“It’s cold and cloudy,” says Blackburn. “I thought camping would be more fun.”

“Any photographs?”

“Not the shots I’d like. But I can’t leave this transmitter.”

“Come in whenever you wish.”

“I think something’ll happen. I’ll stay.”

“Okay, but in another week, I’ll pull the cameras.”

Blackburn checks connectors, punches the transmitter twice to take the pictures and jots to his log.

Intermittent steam and ash eruptions continue from the crater although clouds often obscure the view. The sulfur-dioxide (SO2) content of gas emitted from the volcano is measured at 10-20 metric tons per day during eruptive pulses and about one ton per day between those pulses. These rates are not significantly different from those obtained during March and April and are low compared to emissions from industrial sources (10 to 100 times higher). Measurements of the north flank show that outward movement continues at the same rate (about 5 feet per day). No significant changes in tilt were observed.

Image is of Reid Blackburn's camera, recovered from the Mount St. Helens blast zone in 1980. The film in it was too damaged to yield images, but an unprocessed roll of film shot by Blackburn before the eruption was found in a box at The Columbian last December. Read about Reid Blackburn and see the images athttp://www.columbian.com/news/2013/dec/26/mount-st-helens-eruption-blackburn-lost-roll-film/. Image courtesy of The Columbian.

[Material from USGS–CVO archives; In the Path of Destruction by Richard Waitt (available athttp://wsupress.wsu.edu/new-titles.html); The Columbian newspaper (Vancouver, WA).]

More on Mount St. Helens athttp://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/st_helens/; images at http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/st_helens/st_helens_multimedia_gallery.html.

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