In the Path of Destruction: Eyewitness Chronicles of Mount St. Helens

A napping volcano blinked a wake in March 1980. Two months later, when that mountain roared, Jim Scymanky was logging a slope above Hoffistadt Creek. "Rocks zinged through the woods, bouncing off trees, then the tops of trees snapped off…Suddenly I could see nothing…it got hot right away, then scorching hot and impossible to breathe…I was being cremated, the pain unbearable." Mike Hubbard was further away-sixteen miles northwest, hear Green River. "I was on my knees, my back to the hot wind. It blew me along, lifting my rear sol was up on my hands…It was hot but I didn't feel burned-until I felt my ears curl." Steve Malone, at the University of Washington Seismology Laboratory, was inconsolable. "Wed failed. For two months we'd counted and located thousands of earthquakes, looked for changes to anticipate an eruption. Then it just happened. It killed many people…We could hardly work."