VolcanoesWashington State more prepared now for volcanic eruption

Thirty-five years after the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption in Central Washington, which killed fifty-seven people and blanketed much of the state in ash, state officials say that they are far more ready for a future emergency than they were previous to that disaster.

As the Yakima Herald reports, , officials admit that the state was ill-prepared for the magnitude of the 1980 event, but they also have been improving their knowledge and foresight ever since.

“When the mountain blew, everyone was kind of out there on their own,” said Charles Erwin, the emergency management specialist for the city of Yakima. “That’s what got the county started on doing disaster planning and coordinating with all the local jurisdictions.”

The explosion blew the mountain on either side, creating essentially two separate disaster zones that required immediate attention.

The disorganized response of local, state and federal emergency officials at the time led to the development of new response protocols that current administrations believe have made the region much more prepared should there be another eruption.

“We know we have recharge of magma chamber right now,” said Carolyn Driedger, a scientist with the Cascade Volcanoes Observatory. “We’re fairly confident that the monitoring equipment we have there now will give us about as good a warning as we can get that there is magma rising. We could have an eruption with a few days of warning; it could be 100 years from now.”

Additionally, Washington officials must also worry about other active volcanoes in the area, including Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and Glacier Peak, which are believed to be just as capable of that destruction, and especially ash — the biggest threat to the state’s infrastructure.

“What we’re trying to do again, since it’s far from people’s memory now, is to encourage all the cities to have plans for clearing ash from the streets and where to dump it and how to answer citizens’ questions about what to do with it,” said Erwin.

Mark Stewart, a spokesman for the Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division, added that across the state, local communities at risk of volcano damage are working together on coordinated response plans.

“That eruption really changed the way we as scientists do business; we realized we need to work with emergency managers,” Driedger said. “We can draw a direct line from the St. Helens eruption to those coordination plans and awareness that we know today.”

Among these, better understanding how to protect crops from ash, how to evacuate victims of damage and how to coordinate resources and supply infrastructures have since all been vigorously examined and tested by all sorts of governmental agencies. Even more importantly, the lessons learned from the disaster, and increased educational awareness have made great strides in the past three decades.

“It was really the first modern eruption in U.S. history, and the people in Eastern Washington made a worldwide contribution by documenting their experiences in 1980,” she added. “One really important thing as we move on in time from that memorable eruption is that memory really needs to be transmitted down through time so future generations don’t forget that these are active volcanoes, and you need to be prepared for them to act up from time to time.”