People whom play on top of erupting volcanoes.....

Twice now I have seen people on top of erupting volcanoes...just so "excited" to be there and I say this..Mt. St. Helens, 50 miles north of me erupted in 1980...from an science magazine in April 1995, and shorten somewhat in content.....

At 8:32 am. the greatest landslide in recorded history began to empy into the North Fork of the Touttle River. Chunks of the mountain the size of office buildings sheared off the slope into Spriit Lake sending an 200 foot wave of water and debris across to the oppostie side of the lake. In 10 minutes the landslide traveled 17 miles and filled 25 square miles of the valley to the average depth of 150 feet. As the top 1,300 feet of the mountain collapsed, it released the magma body below in superheated steam and gases..traveling in excess of 350 MPH across the landscape..when it was done 150 square miles laid in ruins. At least 57 people died that day...only two were closer then 13 miles away...but many died of in tensive burns, and had their lungs incinerated on the spot just trying to breathe...the mountain threw up an ash cloud 12 miles in the air...with hot hitting cold air, it created its own huge electrical thunderstorm of giganitci portions...amid the ash of an black cloud it moved off toward the town of Yakima, Washington, where it turned day into instant nighttime, and the street lights were dimly seen amid the fallling ash like an "white-out" in an blizzard.  A half billion tons of ash covered an area of 22,000 miles. Still wanna stand on top an volcano?

Back at the homestead here, about 50 miles away....we expereinced an 5.1 earthquake, and as for the "Rock Shop" some miles down the road from us, with the outside holding crystal rocks to be polished...both inside and outside, they gathered enough "energy" to crack the buildings floor running north to south. For us, as we were opening the electric garage door at the time, it made an jump kind of and stopped and had to be manually closed and "re-set"...but we indistinctively knew what had just happened. We went down the street to see the massive black cloud raising from the mountain.  As the water and debris went across the major I-5 freeway between Portland an Seattle it left ash deposits high in the trunks of the tallest of pine trees.  It carried with it homes of the area, and took an steel bridge off its morrings and to the side of the river. They were lucky enough to close it down to traffic before it took out cars...and surprisingly the bridge there held...I think because much of it went over the bridge itself or around it.  But ti clogged up the shipping lanes into Portland, and has until they are dredged again. Nine years ater and iwth the help of the Boy Scouts and Forrest SErive most the 35 miles from and completely aorund the mountain was replaced with seedling trees again...Spirit Lake is no more...they built an escape channel in the area for if it were to happen agai to not take out the existing Lake in an wall of water downstream. People have continued moving inot the area...and one guy recently wanted to purchase what is left of one side of the mountain for "noriety".

I can't tell you what I'm thinking when I see people standing near the Icelandic Volcano, or the film I saw yesterday of kids up on top fo the Guatemalan Volcano as it spouts off an cloud emission of steam and ash, good thing they had not been on the other side, they would of been in it...people are seriously mis-formed on volcano watching. Back in those days I well remeber the forrest service "fighting" to keep people out of the danger zone of 15 miles from the mountain...if others died that day...we will never know. Mt. St. Helens erupted in May of 1980 and afterwards before she stopped an low burping of lava she emitted enough of it to lay an four lane highway from here to New York four times over ..couple feet thick. But people clamor to see some "excitment" and the last fellow in an restricted area, died just an couple of months as he slid off its snow covered rim...into the crater... to his death.

May 14 and 15th in McMinville, Oregon  is having their annual  UFO Festival, with some well known people, including Travis Walton...whose abduction was made into an movie, it might be just as exciting to go to...and far far safer. They now have an observatory at the mountain people can go to if the snow is melted from Spring..they monitor it constantly because for some reason people just can't see to keep their distance from volcanoes.

Great post again Shirley, although can't help but think those who chase Storms, volcano's etc are NUTS.

I guess the only consolation is that if you fell in you would be cooked before you felt the pain.

My traveling freind of yore went to Hawaii..she rather liked it..and the

first time her and her grils did the "tourist" thing....they took her out on

top of the lava field over there...she said it rather sacred her to look

down into holes of broiling molten lava, and knowing that all that was

between it and death was the lava "crust" you were walking on top of,

said she could hardly wait to get out of there.