St. Helens alert

Lets hope they don't take anyone else WITH them during the qualifying
trials for a DA

Dave

john smith wrote:
Let em go, CJ.
They are Darwin Award candidates.

C J Campbell wrote:

The prediction now is for a much bigger eruption than originally
expected. I
would strongly discourage sightseeing trips in the area.

One of the things that really bothers me is the crowds of people that
have
come to see the mountain. They are sitting in the middle of literally
miles
of downed trees: trees that have all fallen in a direction away from the
mountain. Hardly a blade of grass grows there almost 25 years after the
blast. Yet they think they are far enough away to be safe. They don't
seem
to get a clue from the total devastation that surrounds them.

I know scientists don't expect another eruption like 1980. Well, they
didn't
expect it in 1980, either.

I'm not going to go flying around the mountain, but
to claim that the mountain could have a major eruption when nothing of the
sort is predicted is pretty silly.

Pete
The spirit of Harry Truman is alive and well.

John

Rutger wrote:
... a situation where the Earth might actually rise up to smite thee,
regardless of how well thou maintainest thy airspeed.

hehe...

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
Hardly a blade of grass grows there almost 25 years after the
blast. Yet they think they are far enough away to be safe. They don't seem
to get a clue from the total devastation that surrounds them.

I know scientists don't expect another eruption like 1980. Well, they
didn't
expect it in 1980, either.

It's just that there's a few hundred million tons less of mountain to erupt
now. You could put the entire population of the world in the 1980 crater
and not fill it up.

You wanna see something sad? Go to the visitor's observatory (when it
opens) They've got a great demo of how the mountain erupts, buries the
countryside in hundreds of feet of molten ash, and then how the forest
rebuilds itself and life goes on in a miraculously short time; then they
tell you not to walk off the trail or pick up rocks because the ecosystem is
fragile. Another sign says 'If Mt.St Helens would have wanted you to
take souvenirs, she would have given them to you.' OK...I remember wearing
a dusk mask for a week while my parents put pantyhose over the car's air
filter. I'll take that as permission, thanks.

-c

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message

They didn't expect it? Is that why they did a full-scale evacuation?

The red zone is for the loading and unloading...

Fact is, by May, 1980 Mt. St. Helens had erupted many times, far more
dramatically than anything we've seen here yet.

-c

"C J Campbell" wrote in message

I would expect you to be both confused and just as contrary as usual. I
can
at least count on you to keep life from getting dull. In any event, there
was no full-scale evacuation, nor did they predict an explosion at all.

WRONG! If you're gonna belittle someone, CJ, you should present the facts
straight:

There was a very large RED ZONE evacuation before May 18 that people such as
Harry Truman chose to ignore when they went up to encourage him to leave.

Although hundreds of airplanes were reported flying in the evacuation
zones, the FAA ?investigated only seven reports.

What? There were "hundreds of airplanes in the evacuation zones" I thought
you said there were no evactuations. In fact, if there were hundreds of
airplanes there, perhaps you can tell us how many "Darwin Awards" were
awarded to pilots blown out of the sky.

-c

"john smith" wrote in message

Let em go, CJ.
They are Darwin Award candidates.

Aren't we all?

-c

"Dave S" wrote in message

Lets hope they don't take anyone else WITH them during the qualifying
trials for a DA

You guys keep sucking that media hype right up. "Whoa, this is blahblahblah
reporting. The mountain is DANGEROUS! STAY AWAY FROM THE MOUNTAIN! Let's
go now to our live NewsCrew helicopter hovering over the crater...."

Better send up a NOTAM to watch out for Rodan.

It's erupting right now. But, guess what? Unless you're -right- in front
of the crater, it's pretty obvious when it's venting. Know what you do
then? Turn around and file a PIREP.

I flew around it yesterday. Know what? I saw MORE STEAM COMING OUT OF THE
LAVA DOME WHEN I HIKED IT LAST YEAR AND STARED DOWN AT IT FROM THE RIM than
I did this yesterday.

Mt. St Helens is binary. It's either erupting or its not. If it's
erupting, stay away from it. If it's not, it's not. The only hazard is if
it starts to erupt while you're downrange or you're dumb enough to fly into
the eruption.

-c

and then how the forest
rebuilds itself and life goes on in a miraculously short time; then they
tell you not to walk off the trail or pick up rocks because the ecosystem is
fragile.


That's actually not so crazy as it sounds. Remember, tourists have a big
impact on an ecology, just because there are so many of them.

Jose

--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

"Teacherjh" wrote in message
...

and then how the forest
rebuilds itself and life goes on in a miraculously short time; then they
tell you not to walk off the trail or pick up rocks because the ecosystem
is
fragile.


That's actually not so crazy as it sounds. Remember, tourists have a big
impact on an ecology, just because there are so many of them.

And besides, the ecology never gets a chance to recover from the tourists.
The eruption happens, wipes everything out, and then things can gradually
come back. But to do so, they need to be left alone. Unlike the damage
from the eruption, damage from tourists happens every day, and the ecology
never gets a break.

Reminds me of our visit to Death Valley, where we stopped to look at some
salt pools, the edges of which teemed with very tiny microscopic life.
Signs everywhere implored the tourists to stay on the path, and to not walk
up to the pools, since a single step can wipe out millions of the creatures
and render the area under the footprint sterile for years, maybe even
decades.

More tourists completely ignored the signs than made any attempt to comply
with them. And yes, you could see the left-over footprints everywhere.

Pete