Where Is Washington?
The Puyallup (say: pew-AL-up) Nation calls one of Washington’s most famous mountains “Loowitlatkla” (say: LOO-wit-LAT-kla)—“Lady of Fire”—for good reason. It’s no ordinary mountain. It’s also a volcano. (A British explorer named it Mount St. Helens in 1792.) In 1980, it had been mostly quiet for more than one hundred years. That spring, Mount St. Helens rumbled with small earthquakes for weeks. The Lady of Fire was about to wake up.
On May 18, 1980, a 5.1-magnitude quake shook Mount St. Helens. Its northern side collapsed and caused the largest landslide ever recorded. As the side of the mountain fell away, it released gases that had built up inside. It was like opening a shaken-up can of soda. The blast flattened 230 miles of forest and shot out hot rocks, ash, and steam. The tower of ash rose 18 miles in the air. Mount St. Helens spewed 540 million tons of ash over 22,000 square miles.
The air temperature reached 660 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat melted snow and ice. Water mixed with the ash and created huge mudflows, called lahars. The lahars destroyed more than 185 miles of roads and over 200 homes.
The eruption lasted more than nine hours. By the time it was over, fifty-seven people had died. Most were campers and hikers who thought they were far enough away from the mountain to be safe. Mount St. Helens had been 9,677 feet high. After the eruption, it was down to 8,365 feet. More than 1,300 feet of Mount St. Helens had blown off. Mount St. Helens is the most active volcano in Washington, but it’s not the only one. Volcanoes have been erupting there for the past thirty-six million years!
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