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50 Comments
- CraigJ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17THis is the same series of photos that has beed around for years... Too bad no one actually got it on video tape...
- bflfab, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Isn't that what all video is?
- Aliasing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Not to be crass, but the fifty seven people in visual range of the mountain were all killed.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18thanks for letting me know, i was having a hard time telling
- EatingPie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This photographer stationed himself at what he considered a safe area, and after feeling an earthquake (that brought down the lava dome, and started the eruption) he began shooting. At least one National Geographic photographer died that day at a "safe zone" that was too close to the eruption.
Please, be grateful that we have pictures. People were willing to put their lives in danger to bring us pictures like these, and they're a huge benifit to science and humanity. To dismiss them as "not video" shows a colossal amount of disrespect.
-Pie - jsully, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Dude, I don't have a clue what you just made me watch... but I don't think I'm happy about it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I was in the blow down area a couple years after the eruption, very little had changed. It was at night under a full moon. When were just north of Spirit Lake and shut the lights off for a few minutes just to look around. It was surreal. The mountain looming in the distance to the south, the eerie glow cast over a scene of absolute devastation. Trees frozen in time where super-heated ash killed them where they stood. Still intricate with fine detail of shape and all uniformly gray and lifeless. Here and there, half the tree was dead, half still green. The line through the trees separating living from dead was straight as a razor in many places. Sometimes a patch of green where the trees had been in a valley or shielded by a low rise.
Farther in the trees were blasted down, half-buried in ash and mud, piled up in seemingly impossible jumbles mixed in with rocks and boulders. Some piles looked like a modern sculpture. 150 square miles flattened, as far as you could see in any direction. Everything was still covered with ash, though after a couple years it wasn't as fine. Somewhere, two or three hundred feet below us, Harry Truman lay buried with the remains of his beloved Spirit Lake Lodge. And, almost exactly in the spot we were standing, a photographer took his last pictures of the massive explosion.
Sometime later I was out with some friends and the conversation took a turn to speculating what the end of the world would look like. When they asked me I could say with absolute conviction, "I've seen it." - Pattyo13, on 05/14/2009, -1/+7i just fast forwarded, and it looked more like a video
- roeboedog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There was one man that refused to leave, and he was never found. No one was on top but people did die.
I was about 6 at the time, living about an hour away.(little town called Chehalis) I remember waking up in the morning and it still being dark. It was pretty freaky. - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There are many films of it erupting.. there aren't many videos of it close-up because it would be suicidal.
- Theiguanaman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm sure someone got it on video, but didn't make it out. These were taken east of the mountain, a series of stills then he got the hell out of there. There was a camera man from Seattle's KOMO TV 4 (Dave Crockett) who was trapped in the ash plume, a great video.
You can see this at http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=36900 - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Dude I just saw you in speedos? Not cool. Damn my short attention span and desire to click all links.
- jollyllama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Can we just have a collective "mad props" for the photographer who had the composure and backbone to lay into his shutter for 20 frames when it finally went?
- ProximaC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4His name was Harry Truman. I met him once when I was 7. My dad took us up to Spirit Lodge once and I remember what Spirit Lake looked like to this day. Harry was the owner of the lodge. He'd lived his life under the mountain, and was too stubborn to leave. They tried to have the police force him out even. I was 10 years old in 1980, and my father was a logger in the Red-Zone less than 5 miles from the mt. If it had gone off on a weekday instead of a Sunday morning, he would have been killed, along with hundreds of other loggers. I lived very close to the mountain, in Woodland, WA
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Where's Gandalf and the eagles?
- Thuktun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3For some details on Gary Rosenquist, the one who took these photos of the eruption, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Helens_(film)
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Publications/MSHPPF/MSH_past_present_future.html
http://www.rps.psu.edu/edchoice/feeling.html
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2093.html
It sounds like their party barely escaped alive and was very lucky. - afex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5must...visit....travelvideostore.com....
- jonathantneal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3After 8:00 of whatever-the-f that was, I finally saw that crummy explosion (just an overlayed cg? eruption over video of the mountain, without any lighting adjustments even). I try to support the small-time film-makers out there, but geezus, I've never been so disappointed. How was this relevant? Ah buddy, I didn't dig you down, but I just thought someone should tell you.
- boolshit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The volcanologist that radioed vancouver is also the one who took those pictures. IIRC
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Did you seriously get cancer?
- TheWorkz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sall good.. Cant expect much for a film make in one weekend, and for my second film?? :) Apologies all..
- chabuhi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Too much of you and not enough of "Amy" at the outset there.
- JohnnyBKGB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I was there, living in Yakima at the time. Woke up covered in ash. All electronics, cars, etc. did not work because the fine ash had made its way into everything. The army/government came door to door telling everybody it was ok. We should leave our houses and start cleaning up. Three days later they came back with full hazmat suits telling us that we all probably got some weird diseases like cancer because of the fine ash and that they were sorry for telling us that it was ok to go into. They then advised that we all purchase gas masks if we could find them. Pretty scarry opening your door to a guy in a hazmat suit! Anyway, about eleven years later I got cancer... Yippee! I still have jars of ash as a reminder though... Anybody want to huff any?!
- evileddie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens
- Thuktun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Vulcanologist David Johnston is the one who radioed Vancouver. He died in the blast. Photographer Reid Blackburn died in his car. Gary Rosenquist took these photos. He managed to survive the explosion.
Google is your friend. - seanetal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was 10 and lived in Spokane. WI was walking to a friend's house when we heard the mountain blow - 250 miles away. Was at my friend's house for about an hour or so before it started getting dark - freaked me out to no end.
- blahbbs, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I was living about 16 miles southwest of the peak when it blew. Pretty sweet. I don't recall hearing a blast, probably because it went north (duh), but I do remember the earthquake. That and all the lightning in the ash plume. I probably had the best, safest seat in the house down at Yale Dam.
- Crosshare, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I remember from touring it a couple years back there was also a man who was trapped in his car a few turns down from Spirit Lake that they figure was burned alive.
- leoedin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2so...just imagine the stuff between them
Pretty cool - was anyone standing at the top at the time? - Mardala, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah I remember him. The news interviewed him on his porch. I was living in Olympia at the time and about 10 at the time. I can vaguely recall seeing the plume in the background as we were driving on I5. Then the bit of ash that covered the ground.
- JohnnyBKGB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You were lucky that you were on that side. You would have surely died if you were on the other side. Either by the blast, or by the massive mud slides that were created from all the snow melt off... Lucky!
- lustre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't think anyone was actually on the mountain. There was a volcanologist or geologist close by who radioed: "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!" at the time of the eruption. he didn't survive. There was a resort owner on Spirit Lake, arguably "on the mountain" who wouldn't leave. He died, too.
I'm surprised that I have yet to see a video created with those stills and something like RealViz Re-timer which does an amazing job of creating in between frames. - AMDnVidiaATi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Wow that was disappointing. I thought it was supposed to be a VIDEO of the mountain erupting...
- srosenow98, on 10/23/2007, -0/+0It sure is impressive video. I remember when I first saw the car as a kid. The KOMO TV car seen in the clip now sits (albeit in a severe state of decay) at a restaurant known as the 19-Mile House on Highway 504, and I made my first visit to that restaurant back when I was a kid on the 10th anniversary. Behind the restaurant and down a little hill are parked several vehicles that were partially or fully destroyed by the blast. The KOMO car was the only car intact, and was actually towed away from the blast site still operable. Today, the car is a former shell of itself. On the passenger's side, the KOMO lettering has all but completely faded away, and on the driver's side you can still see the KOMO lettering. You can also still make out the "UP HILL" sketch on the hood if you look close enough, because the ash etched into the hood when Crockett made that drawing.
When I first saw the car in 1990, it was still operable, and in fact still had the keys in the iginition and the TV equipment inside it - and the red stripe was still visible. When I returned on the eruption's 25th anniversary two years ago, I found that the car's condition had deteriorated significantly. The car had now been a target for theft and vandalism (the radio and TV equipment, as well as the car's radio and hubcaps were all missing) and the red stripe was no longer visible on the side, as the car's paint was badly faded.
If only I had some money, I'd buy the car and restore it before it's lost forever. - xenoploid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Wow, that GREATLY SUCKED. They should have time compressed actual video, instead of doing a slideshow between stills.
- srosenow98, on 10/23/2007, -0/+0I know this is a year-old entry here, but here's some new information.
Someone did catch the opening moments of the May 18, 1980 eruption on videotape. Actually, two did, and both videos were featured in documentaries. One video was shot on the west side (a clip on YouTube showing the video shows the video's film "reversed") at the spot where HAM Radio operators Ty and Mariana Kearney were located, and another was shot from the northwest at a location about 15 miles northwest of the peak. The second video (only a brief clip exists to my knowledge) shows the first five seconds of the vertical and lateral blast, and you can actually see how the eruption plume came to form as it did in the Gary Rosenquist sequence (there were 24 frames in all, including three extras shot as he and friend Joel Harvey were leaving Bear Meadow). - TheKoopaBros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been within a couple of miles of the volcano. You can still see the "leveling" of the peak from that intial eruption 20+ years ago. It really is amazing to think about how much energy along with mass was erupted in such a short time span.
Decent video, and I wouldn't expect much better, as no one knew the exact date that it would blow. - EatingPie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is take from the IMAX Film "Ring of Fire."
Is it just me, or do others also find it frustrating when someone else hijacks their own url onto the video?
-Pie - pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+126 years ago this eruption welcomed the baby pseudojd to the state of Washingon.
- dolemite5005, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Same still images that are shown all the time. Nothing new.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3I've seen much better videos to be honest.. I live an hour away from the mountain.
I'm more concerned about Mount Rainier now.. but for now it just makes for a phenomenal horizon, it looks like you can touch it with your hand on a clear day, even though we're 70 miles away. - jonathantneal, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Yea, seriously, it wasn't THAT long ago. Nobody thought to videotape that amazing explosion? lustre mentioned used RealViz Re-timer to create an actual 'video' looking presentation, anybody up for that?
- dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Yeah, what the hell? It's just a slide show! Someone had to have videotaped this thing.
Buried as inaccurate because it's not great at all. - greyfade, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3this "video" of helens is the only known series of (7?) photographs that are spliced into a video. they've been using this as the "video" of the eruption for YEARS.
buried as LAME. - chumpbuster, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Yeah... but Kevin Rose dugg it!
- decades, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3It's an animated GIF in a video, but It's amazing nonetheless ;-)
It just reminds us; NOTHING ***** with Mother Nature. - TheWorkz, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4During the most recent Mt. St. Helens issue, I shot this short film in 72 hours for a Film Challenge. At about 8 min, we did a cheesy explosion using Combustion.. Kinda funny though... While evauating the mountain two years ago, we got through State Police and were the only ones besides USGS at Mt. St. Helens that day.. Pretty freaky at the time..
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8050775262657563261&q=Adams+Peak
I do not normally self-promote, but due to relevence, i must. :) - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2delete
- anastrophe, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2wow! rockin' hot hot current events, only 26 years old! why is this a digg? this composite of the still phots has been around literally for decades. i don't get it.
- Shakermaker, on 10/12/2007, -32/+17...yet the video of this is of a series of photographs.
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