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Under the Rumbling Mountain

SIX YOUNG FRIENDS WERE CAMPING BY MOUNT ST. HELENS WHEN THE VOLCANO ERUPTED IN 1980. DESPITE BEING WELL OUTSIDE THE DESIGNATED DANGER ZONE THEY WERE CAUGHT IN THE BURNING BLAST WAVE AND TWO WERE KILLED. THE SURVIVORS HAD TO BRAVE SCORCHING WINDS AND CRAWL MILES THROUGH HOT ASH TO GET HELP.

DATE: 1980 SITUATION: VOLCANIC ERUPTION CONDITION OF CONFINEMENT: CAUGHT IN A SCORCHING BLAST WAVE AND TRAPPED IN A BURNING FOREST DURATION OF CONFINEMENT: 10 HOURS MEANS OF ESCAPE: SHELTERING IN HOLES, CRAWLING THROUGH HOT ASH NO. OF ESCAPEES: 4 DANGERS: ASPHYXIATION, BURNT TO DEATH, EXHAUSTION EQUIPMENT: NONE

Mount St. Helens the day before the 1980 eruption. The view is from Johnston Ridge, 10 km (6 miles) northwest of the volcano. The eruption removed much of the northern face of the mountain, leaving a large crater.

At a safe distance

Everyone knew that Mount St. Helens was a dangerous place to be in May 1980. On 20 March, there was a 4.1 magnitude earthquake, the first warning sign that the volcano had reawakened. A week later a small explosion blew a 76 m (250 ft) hole in the mountain and released a plume of ash. Similar eruptions continued for the next month and on 30 April officials imposed a 16 km (10 mile) ‘red zone’ around the mountain. No one was allowed inside without written permission.

But the wilderness area around the volcano is vast and the young friends camping beside the Green River were way beyond the danger zone. In fact, they were 26 km (16 miles) north of Mount St. Helens and on the other side of two 300 m (984 ft) high ridges. They couldn’t even see the rumbling mountain. They could enjoy their spring weekend in the woods no problem. Or so they thought.

Sleeping in

There were six friends camping in the meadow by the river in three tents: Dan Balch and Brian Thomas; Bruce Nelson and his girlfriend Sue Ruff; Terry Crall and his girlfriend Karen Varner.

Thomas had only managed to persuade Balch to come at the last minute; his friend had wanted to go to the beach. But once Balch saw the peaceful woodland meadow by the river he loved it, and the two friends stayed up till 3 a.m. chatting round their campfire. At 8.32 a.m. on 18 May they were still cosy in their sleeping bags.

Then something jolted Balch awake. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes to see Thomas staring out of the tent window with his eyes getting wider and wider.

Balch shuffled over for a look and saw a boiling white cloud in the sky above the ridge to the south. The cloud quickly started turning red and black and it was clearly heading towards them. Balch and Thomas sprinted from their tent and were heading for the nearest trees when the sun went out.

A furnace-like blast of heat flung Dan Balch and Brian Thomas off their feet and sucked the breath from their lungs.

A shower of ash and mud caked Balch in burning grit. He went from frozen to roasting in a heartbeat.

Balch managed to get to his feet and yelled Thomas’s name. There was no answer. Then another savage burst of pain hit him: he looked down to see his hands and left leg were badly burned. He crawled over to the river to ease the pain. The water was muddy and getting warmer by the second.

He got back up onto the bank and resumed his search for his friend. As he scrambled over fallen trees he looked down and saw Thomas pinned beneath a web of torn and splintered branches.

Thomas was in agony, his hip clearly broken by the falling tree. By now the charred skin was coming off Balch’s hands in chunks. The pain from his hands made him scream, but he kept working to free his friend. Somehow he was able to pull his friend up to the top of the tangle just as ash started to fall. Within seconds it was coming down so thickly that they couldn’t see each other’s faces though they were just inches apart.

Marshmallows toasted

Nelson and Ruff were toasting marshmallows for breakfast when the mountain exploded. For a few seconds they felt a brisk wind; the flames of their fire were blown horizontally, but they could move freely. Then daylight turned to darkness and the forest seemed to topple over.

They fled for shelter, and in the darkness and confusion they accidentally fell into a hole left by the root ball of a blown-over tree. This stroke of fortune protected them from other falling trees and undoubtedly saved their lives. After a few seconds cowering in the blackness they felt the air turn frighteningly hot. They could hear their own hair sizzling. Hair singes at 120°C and Nelson, who was a baker and worked regularly with open ovens, estimated the temperature to be about 150°C. The heatwave boiled pitch from the trees and the air was still hot enough to inflict minor burns several minutes later.

After a few minutes of darkness, the sky suddenly cleared for a few minutes and then a dense fall of ash began. Nelson and Ruff dug themselves out of the debris and called for Crall and Varner. There was no answer. Their friends were later found dead in their tent, killed by a falling tree.

Walking out of hell

Two hours after the blast, Balch and Thomas were still gathering their wits amid the debris. They had their shirt collars pulled over their noses and mouths to filter out ash, but were still nearly choking with all the caustic dust in their lungs. Then Balch saw Nelson and Ruff picking their way through the fallen trees towards them.

The eruption of Mount St. Helens on 18 May 1980, seen from West Point Peak in Gifford-Pinchot National Forest, Washington.

A panoramic image of Mount St. Helens showing miles of barren lands and destroyed landscape caused by the eruption on 18 May 1980.

Thomas was too injured to walk or be carried, so they built a makeshift lean-to in an old cabin and sheltered him there while they tried to find help.

Unfortunately for Balch, he hadn’t had time to put his shoes on when they fled the tent. He now found himself scrambling from fallen tree to fallen tree trying to avoid the carpet of hot ash half a metre deep. His feet began to get severely burnt and his progress was slow. It made sense for Nelson and Ruff to hike out as fast as possible to raise the alarm.

Balch continued west, wading in the river as much as possible. After 3 km (2 miles), he ran into a local man, Buzz Smith, and his two sons. Smith lent Balch a pair of canvas tennis shoes and they trekked on. A logger joined their party and finally, after a full day’s trekking, they were spotted at 6 p.m. by two rescue helicopters.

Dan Balch walked 18 km (11 miles) barefoot through the burning forest.

Plucked to safety

Balch urged the rescuers to go back for his friends, but he had a tough time convincing them that Nelson and Ruff really were alive in the position he was indicating. Finally a helicopter flew off to pick them up.

‘I showed them on their map where Brian was. They looked at me like I was crazy.’

Nelson and Ruff had been trekking all day through the carnage and were utterly exhausted. Their relief at seeing the rescue helicopter was overwhelming, but it almost turned to despair when the pilot didn’t spot them. They had to use their clothes to stir up dust to get noticed.

Although Nelson and Ruff could now be whisked to safety, they refused to get into the helicopter unless somebody went back to pick up the injured Thomas.

Balch was airlifted to St. John Medical Center in Longview and treated for extensive burns. Thomas also was taken there for surgery on his hip. With Balch heavily sedated for his pain, it was left to hospital staff to tell his parents that their 20-year-old son wasn’t at the beach after all.

Lucky to be alive

Although the world knew it was coming, the eruption of Mount St Helens surprised everyone with its violence. At 8.32 a.m. on 18 May 1980, a 5.1 magnitude earthquake rocked the volcano and the entire northern face of the mountain fell away in a gigantic rock avalanche. The avalanche created a gap in the mountain, and the pent-up pressure exploded laterally in a huge blast of pumice and ash.

The avalanche quickly grew in size as it crashed down the mountain, reaching up to 240 km/h (150 mph) and destroying everything in its path. But this was soon overtaken by the blast of pumice and ash which scorched northward at 480 km/h (300 mph) and was a raging hot 350°C. Everything within a 516 km² (200 mile²) area was devastated. The plume of ash towered 16 km (10 miles) into the atmosphere. The eruption lasted nine hours.

Fifty-seven people, mostly scientists or local residents who refused to move, were killed.