Nostalgia & History > Mt St Helens impacts on rail operations

To all on TO,

I could not allow the 35th anniversary of the explosion of Mt St Helens pass without sharing some memories of that event with all of you, focused on how the massive eruption impacted rail operations.

The Eruption itself...

The first signs of Mt St Helens reawakening after 123 years had passed since its last activity was on March 20, 1980, when a minor earthquake registering 4.1 on the Richter scale occured directly beneath the mountain. Over the next week an increasing number of minor tremors took place, all beneath the peak and all at increasingly shallow depths. Earthquakes of this type below a volcano are a sign that magma is moving up through the volcanoes throat. At 12:36 PM on March 27 a small eruption of steam and cold ash blew out of the ice-filled summit crater hearlding the first volcanic activity in the contiguous 48 states since California's Lassen Peak erupted between 1914 and the early 1920's.

Over the coming weeks, Mt St Helens became more and more active, developing two summit craters that finally merged into a single large crater. Ash from these modest eruptions turned the normally white cone black and dusted many areas of Washington and Oregon. During this time there were also lulls in the action as the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other scientists and volcanologists monitored the peak to try and determine how far this activity would go. Extensive monitoring insturments were placed all across the mountain to detect seismic activity as well as ground deformation that could portend a major eruptive event.

By late April, 1980, those monitoring Mt. St. Helens had discovered that a large area of the mountain's north face, about 1.5 miles in diameter, was starting to bulge toward the north and northwest. The mountain was relatively quiet at this time, yet "the Bulge," as it came to be known, was growing at 5 to 6 feet each day directly above Spirit Lake north of the peak. By early May the Bulge had extended St Helen's north face out over 450 feet, and was caused by magma being intruded within the mountain creating was is called a cryptodome. The Bulge and the magma creating it was regarding as the single greatest threat at Mt St. Helens as the sun set on Saturday, May 17, 1980.

On the morning of Sunday, May 18, 1980, at just after 8:31 AM (PDT) - a time which is officially recorded as 8:32 AM - a 5.1 magnitude earthquake occured directly under the mountain causing the entire north/northwest face (including the Bulge) to slide away into Spirit Lake, and uncovering the cryptodome of thick, gas-rich, and highly volitile Dacite-type magma to explode in a lateral blast to the northwest, followed by an equally massive vertical explosion cloud that rose to an altitude of 12 miles (over 60,000 feet). The lateral blast, known as a pyroclastic flow and surge, started with the landslide at about 180 MPH, but soon accellerated to around 650 MPH, eventually breaking the sound barrier (Mach One, 730 MPH) creating a massive double sconic boom that was heard as far north as Vancouver, BC and due to unusual atmospherics was not heared in Portland, but 45 minutes later was distinctively heard in Redding, CA about 500 miles to the south...

The Pyroclastic flow leveled 230 square miles of very dense, old growth forest, with trees up to 200 feet high, killed 57 persons, and thousands of deer, elk and other wildlife. The landslide hit Spirit Lake with enough force to send waves over 600 foot high ridges surrounding the lake. The heat of the Pyroclastic flow melted much of the snow and glacial ice on the mountain and formed what is known as a Lahar, a hot mudflow, that swept down the Toutle River (which drains Spirit Lake), into the Cowlitz River, and finally into the Columbia River at Kelso-Longview, WA. This mudflow reduced the Columbia River's shipping channel from 40 feet deep to only 14 feet by the next morning, trapping over 30 ocean-going ships at upstream ports such as Kalama, Vancouver (WA) and Portland. The mudflow took out every bridge on the Toutle River, except those nears its mouth along old Highway 99, I-5 and the BN Northwest Corridor mainline, which was also used by UP and Amtrak. Those latter bridges survived the mudflow, but all traffic (both train and highway) was stopped for a couple of days.

The ash cloud from this eruption, which lasted until well into the evening on May 18, spread eastward across Eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and Montana, and upper level winds even dropped enough ash to be seen in central Oklahoma. Aside from the aforementioned distruption to Seattle-Portland train traffic, it was the ash cloud that had the greatest impact on ground transportation. Volcanic ash of the type erupted by Mt St Helens usually falls like talcum powder, but when it gets wet it makes roads (and runways) VERY slick. The ash will bake onto the cumbustion chambers of jet engines causing flameouts, which brought normal air service across the Pacific Northwest to a halt until the upper level ash cleared out. The air filters on cars and trucks quickly clogged, but diesel locomotives, with their thick oil bleed filters kept running. On some engines the fileters had to be changed every day or two, so the railroad had to rush extra filters in from other parts of the country.

Amtrak's "Empire Builder" was still running as a single train back then via Yakima and Pasco, since the Portland section would not be started until 1981 at the same time when the Seattle section returned passenger service to Stevens Pass (Cascade Tunnel) via Wenatchee. Amtrak put out instrutions that when the train was running along a highway, it was to stop and pick-up anyone who's car had stalled in the ash and get them to the next town. many stranded motorists were resuced by a greatly overcrowded "Empire Builder" across eastern Washington over the next few days. Since no trains were running between Portland and Seattle, Amtrak took one of its "Mt. Rainier" trainsets, consisting of a single F40PH and four new Superliner coaches (one with a douwnstairs temporary cafe), and used them to maintain service on the "Pioneer" between Portland and Salt Lake City. That train arrived into SLC on the morning of Wednesday, May 21, 1980, and caused quite a stir at the historic Union Pacific Station downtown. That was the first Superliner train to come to Utah. As I recall, by the end of that week, trains were back running on the Northwest Corridor and long-distance service began to return to normal.

Of course, considerable Weyerhauser lumber railroad operations out of Kelso-Longview along the Toutle River were wiped out by the volcanic mudflow and never replaced. If you ask Larry ("Ritzville") here on TO, he will tell you about the thick layer of Mt St Helens ash just under the surface of the dirt where he lives, and of how local farmers still kick up big clouds of the ash when they plow. It is interesting to note that because the explosion cloud was so turbid when it left Mt St Helens that morning, the heaviest ashfall was in Ritzville, and not closer to the peak at Yakima. This was due to the cloud calming down and finally dumping its load of ash further from the peak. The volcano community learned more from that one eruption of Mt St Helens than probably any other eruption in modern times...

Much of the ash from Mt St Helens eventually fell on BN-owned land all out across eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and northern Montana. This gave rise to an interesting conversation I had with a BN official. After the 1980 eruption, I was speaking with a friend from the Burlington Northern, who owned most of Mt St Helens as part of an original Northern Pacific Land Grant (much as Southern Pacific owned most of Mt Shasta in California). In joking with him about the event, I told him that the BN was the only railroad in history to relocate its real estate assets by air from one state to another... As one who has studied and taught about volcanoes, particularly those in the Cascade Range, for many decades, the events of 35 years ago today combined both of these interests and activities...

I hope all of you have found this of interest, and I encourage any of you who can to share your own memories of that event, as well as more detail on the impacts to Weyerhauser and other rail operations across the northwest.

Now just imagine what will happen to the Shasta Route when Mt Shasta erupts next???? (This is why you want to ride the "Coast Starlight" while the railroad and the scenery are still there...)

Best wishes to all...

ShastaDaylight

Cogged air filters on the locomotives was a big problem across the Northern Divisions of the BN

Thanks for the story!  I had a friend and his family get stranded in Ritzville, I believe, staying at a local church!  I remember some vivid sunsets in Colorado, where I was living at the time - and we got some ash fall there too.

Lee Hower - Sacramento

I lived in Roswell, GA, just North of Atlanta, at the time of the eruption.  I well remember finding ash from the eruption, on my car, several days after the eruption.  No joke.

Bob Callahan
Monticello, IN

I was in Portugal and watched this unfold on TV. At the time, an unbelievable event to me.  A few weeks later I was in Portland on business and remember an ash fall one morning which looked like a nighttime snowfall.   Interesting about Ritzville, I remember shooting some BN action there that summer and how the trains kicked up a lot of ash.  Interesting to hear the ash layer is still there 35 years later.  Now living in Chile, we've had three different volcanoes down south erupt in the past couple of years,  There are close to 100 actives around the country, not to mention some in Bolivia along the border.  Bigger earthquakes down here too....lol

Sure a vivid memory......views of the billowing ash cloud from atop Washington Park....the ash sure took out my gutters here on my home in Sylvan....still have a large jar of ash from them.  Sure was a pretty mountain....not any more.   Just again proves who is in charge.  

Makes me wonder if the folks at Mt. Rainier have a plan to get equipment out of harms way if she ever exhibits the same symptoms.

Posted from iPhone

Isn't the Cascade Range also part of a really odd type of continental rifting? I know that the Pacific plate is subducting beneath NorCal, OR, WA and BC and assumedly there is a hotspot from the Pacfic plate that drives the volcanism in the region, but it sounds odd to have a rift not so far from a subduction zone?

Sunday May 18, 1980 dawned as a beautiful morning at our home, then in Redmond, east of Seattle, WA.  The family was jolted awake by the sonic boom but
made no connection with the mountain. Since it was such a lovely day we decided to pack up the Grand Torino an head east on I-90 for a picnic at Lake Easton
state park. We found a table, made our 'spread' and were just about to tear into the lunch when a motorist, drove by our site and yelled: "You better
get out of here, FAST, Mt. St Helens just blew up and they're closing I-90 east of here!!. Back into the Ford we went and hightailed it westbound back home. Good thing
we moved fast as the authorities were closing sections of the interstate behind us. We had just minimal ash around our house, not even enough to collect some. This
was not the case east of the mountain. WAF has remarked the air intake filter problems. I don't remember the particulars now but I do know that the filters had to
be serviced on a much accelerated schedule for quite a long time before things began to settle down.

On the BN, the Toutle river was turned into an ugly, gray sludge that, as far as I know still runs gray with ash to this day. I got off the Seattle-Vancouver, WA. pool in 2007
and the Toutle was still that way when I left. BN had Form Y train orders in effect 24-7 for over a year to protect trucks crossing the double mains with loads of
ash and dumped them west of the railroad tracks from about MP85 all the way to about Rocky Point. As an aside, a huge ash 'hill' was created both north and south
of the MP85 control point. To those not around during these times, the 'hill' has become overgrown with Scotch Broom and you wouldn't know it from any other hill
in the vicinity. Last Friday I drove down I-5 and was surprised to see that a sizeable chunk of the hill has been removed back down to original grade level.
Anybody know whats up with this?

Charlie

There is ash not far under the layer of todays soil. Even in feeding the birds in the backyard, they peck down far enough to see the white ash, along with gardening. It was quite an event in Ritzville, WA. I believe Ritzville needed the National Guard to help the citizens remove ash from house roofs and property. Thanks for the interesting information on your post.

Larry



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/15 22:56 by Ritzville.

My wife and I were camping in our '73 VW bus at Mt. Rainier National Park during the June, '80 eruption.  I remember the evening before, looking out at St. Helens venting steam.  The next morning we found out about the second eruption.  I remember vividly of crossing the Toutle River on I-5 north.  I was amazed at the size of the debris still choking the river.  Somewhat ironically, we stopped at the Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center the day before the second eruption.

Kent in CArmel Valley

Marvelous overall account. Thanks so much for posting!

~ BZ
 

     I still have my newspaper which was completely the Mt. St. Helens eruption and aftermath. In fact these days they would not be allowed to publish photos like they did back then, such as poor Evlanty Sharopov ( logger ) who climbed a tree to escape the boiling hot mud flow and that was where they found him about a month later. The most famous last radio transmission also of " Vancover, . . Vancover, this is it! " from Reid Blackburn I believe.

To all,

Thanks for all the great posts! I am surprised what I shared received so many in such a short period of time! I'll try to answer some of the questions as well as to add some additional information to what I wrote (somewhat in haste before a meeting) earlier this evening...

My apologies for having forgotten to mention that Mt St Helens was 9677 feet high before the explosion, and it is today only 8363 ft at its current summit. The mountain essentially hollowed itself out on this date 35 years ago, and all that is left is the west, south, and east flanks of the mountain, with a huge crater open to the northwest taking up the interior of the peak. Inside that crater is a volcanoic plug dome dating from the early 1980's, plus a new and smaller dome right behind it (to the south) from the 2004 eruptive period. A small glacier is starting to form between the new dome and the south crater wall...

Mt St Helens is a stratovolcano, as are most of the major peaks in the Cascade Range other than Lassen Peak (the southernmost volcano in the range, east of Redding, CA, which is the world's largest plug-dome type volcano...) These peaks are made up of alternating layers of lava, air fall ash, and loose, fragmented pyroclastic material from the hot (2000 degrees) glowing clounds of superheated ash that came out from Mt St Helens in the lateral blast on this date in 1980. Pyroclastic flows and surges are the most dangerous phenomenon associated with tall stratovolcanoes such as St. Helens, Mt Shasta, etc. Because of their high amounts of loose material, as well as the hydrothermal effects of acidic hot water percolating through them (which turns the rock into clay), stratovolcanoes are inherently unstable, and are easily eroded by the glaciers that cover most such peaks in the Cascades.

Molten rock is called magma when it is still underground, and lava once it erupts and flows from a volcano. The lava types found in most major Cascade peaks are Andesite lava (named for the Andes Mountains along the west coast of South America, and where the tallest volcanoes in the world are found...), as well as Dacite lava. Andesite is slightly less pasty than Dacite, and the thicker and pastier the magma the more gas it holds in suspension. When such magma erupts, and the surrounding rock is removed thus removing the confining pressure on the magma, it usually explodes violently as it did when the earthquake-induced landslide removed the north face of St Helens uncovering the cryptodome of gas-rich Dacite magma. This is why the Cascade volcnoes are such a threat to the areas that surround them. Also, most Cascade peaks are covered with glaciers, and when they erupt, it is "surf's up"  with hot mudflows in places like Puyallup, WA, Tacoma, along the Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers below Mt St Helens, etc. If a river drains a major Cascade Peak, it and the towns along it are under threat from Lahars (mudflows), if that mountain erupts...

One comment addressed what was called a "rift" that creats volcanic activity such as in the Cascades. Well, if you follow California's San Andreas earthquake fault (where the continental plates slide by one another) northwest from the San Francisco Bay Area, when the fault reaches Cape Mendocino it turns west under the Pacific Ocean. The fault has not touched land since Point Reyes and Bodega Head northwest of San Francisco, and very close to where it turns west southwest of Eureka, it is joined by the Juan de Fuca Subduction Zone (today called the Cascadia Subduction Zone). From that point north there is no side to side movement, but the heavy volcanic seabed rocks of the plate beneath the Pacific is subduction (sinking) beneath the lighter continental rocks of the North American Plate. Wherever you have subduction, you will have a chain of volcanoes, usually about 150 miles away in the direction the seabed is sinking (in this case it is sinking west to east, so the volcanoes are east of the subduction boundary).

Once those seabed rocks get about 60 to 80 miles down, which takes about 125 to 150 miles in distance from the subduction zone in question, the seabed starts to melt, and like all hot things, the molten rock starts to find its way through the earth's crust to the surface, and that is what feeds the volcanoes. Now if you look at a map (or better yet GoogleEarth), draw a line from Cape Mendocino, and the Mendocino Triple Conjunction (as the aforementioned junction is called) directly east, guess what you come to??? Lassen Peak and the south end of the Cascade Range. The northernmost peak in the Cascades is Mt Garibaldi north of Vancouver, BC. (Canada calls their end of the Cascades the Coast Mountains...)

For all of you fans of the beautiful SP (UP) Shasta Route, it is worth mentioning that Mt Shasta is second only to Mt St Helens as the most frequently active Cascade stratovolcano, and Shasta has a very vilent eruptive history... However, the mountain that poses the greatest threat to the most people and facilities, and which is therefore the most dangerous Cascade peak, is Mt Rainier. In addition to the obvious volcanic threat, the weakened inner structure of this very old peak (the rocks are turned to a watery clay by the previously mentioned hydrothermal activity) could collapse when the big subduction earthquake hits the Juan de Fuca/Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of Washington. All of those towns and suburbs, as well as rail lines and port facilities, in the river valleys south and east of Seattle and Tacoma are at very high risk from the resulting mammoth mudflows that would result.

I hope this provides some additional information on the events of this date back in 1980, and that it will help all of the readers on TO to better appreciate the unique hazards found in today's Cascade Range. And those hazards impact rail operations as well as highways, towns and cities... Returning to more of a railroad focus. If you have not traveled from California north to Portland or Seattle aboard Amtrak's "Coast Starlight," which covers the Cascades from Mt Shasta to Mt Rainier in the daytime (northbound only!), you are missing out on what I would consider the most scenic of all Amtrak routes. If you are fortunate enough to travel on a sunny day, all of the major Cascade volcanoes can be seen from the train, along other beautiful scenery which is closer to the railroad. It is a trip I strongly encourage you to take!

Best wishes, and my sincerest thanks for all the great comments, memories, and for the photo!

ShastaDaylight

I lived in N Idaho then and we didn't find out until late in the afternoon when the darkest, angriest looking cloud appeared on the western horizon.  That year the garden produced the largest potatoes and beets ever.  One potato was enough for dinner for our family of 6.  I remember my mom trying in vain to keep the ash from being tracked into the house over the next few weeks.

Excellent write-up.

I was 2 weeks away from high school graduation when Mt. St. Helens blew.  I was meeting my friends at a local park for a basketball game when I noticed very dark, boiling clouds going over the Tri-Cities.  Never heard a sonic boom.  Later that morning, we found out that Mt. St. Helens had erupted.  Got a little ash fall but nothing like Yakima or Ritzville.  For several years after the eruption, one had to be very careful buying a used car in Eastern Washington as you did not want any car that had been driven thru the ash--it ruined many motors.  Railroad operations were very slow that day but seemed to be back to normal by the next day, at least the old S.P.&S. from Pasco to Vancouver.
Thanks for your great post,
Mike

I seem to recall that some of that ash made it ot the Midwest in producing red (orange?) skies in the evening? Or do I have that confused with another event?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/15 21:29 by wabash2800.

You remember right. We had brilliant sunsets here in Ohio and actually had traces of ash one morning a few days after the eruption. The Mount Pinatubo eruption also gave us spectacular sunsets for a while.

Rebecca Morgan
Jacobsburg, OH

We lived in the north end of Tacoma, WA and on the morning of May 18th, 1980 I went to the garage for something and I had one of those "what was that?" moments, looked at my watch out of habit and thought nothing of it.  We went about our day, did some shopping and got home about 4:30PM.  About 4:50 I turned on the TV to watch the news and that was the first we had any idea of what had happened.

I can't recall how long after the eruption, but my guess would be 18 to 24 months, I was running one of the small harbor tugs in Tacoma and I got order to pull a log raft our of the Weyerhaeuser log pocket in the Hylebos Waterway and take it to Storage.  When we arrived at the pocket and looked at the raft all the logs were grey.  Both my sailor and I looked at them and thought "What the heck?"  For some reason it wasn't coming through the thick skull it was wood from the Mt St. Helen's blast area.  It was a strange sight and the ash was imbedded in the bark and didn't was off.  I don't know how many 6 section rafts of St Helen's wood were dumped, but I pulled maybe 2 or 3 more over the next month or two.  All that wood was towed to Everett.

Regards, John