The 1980 Eruption of Mount Saint Helens

In my notes this week I wanted to offer a little more detail about some of the people mentioned in this story.

Governor Dixy Lee Ray

Governor Dixy Lee Ray was both criticised and praised for her response to the disaster. On the one hand, she established the Red Zone, into which most people were not allowed. In doing so she potentially saved as many as 30,000 people from coming to harm.

At the same time she also allowed logging activities to continue in the surrounding Blue Zone – with 11 loggers who were working there caught up in the eruption and killed. And, to make matters worse, she later asserted that everyone who had died had been near the volcano illegally.

In fact, only one person amongst the dead was in an area where they weren’t legally permitted to be… and that was Harry Truman.

Harry Truman

Harry Truman, the lodge keeper who refused to leave his property despite the ominous rumblings of the volcano nearby, became something of a folk hero in the days before the eruption. He was someone who refused to be told what to do, and was ready to stand his ground even in the face of a completely un-survivable threat.

This was something the public certainly responded to. As news of his refusal to evacuate spread, dozens of journalists travelled out to interview him – he almost always spoke to them with a glass of whiskey and coke in hand, and tended to give colourful replies to any suggestion that he might be safer if he left.

At one point, some schoolchildren from across the country wrote to him with letters of encouragement. Harry replied, and even included some ash from one of the preliminary eruptions. When the big eruption came, those same schoolchildren sold this ash in order to pay for flowers to be sent to Harry’s family.