Mount St. Helens Archive
@mountsthelens1980.bsky.social
May 18, 1980 | Chopper Seven
Pilot Chuck Sicotte hovers over Toutle as KIRO's Lorenzo Townsend shoots and Brooks Burford reports live to Eyewitness News.
Logs tumble down the Toutle River; minutes after the helicopter lifts off a gravel bar, the lahar covers it. At Kelso, rescuers report the dead.
https://bsky.app/profile/mountsthelens1980.bsky.social/post/3mxpwuagoqc2l
It's one of those events I only vaguely remember. I don't remember ever seeing any news footage like this at the time. I didn't realize how many logs were being washed downriver.
I was 30yo. On the east coast, coverage was more after-the-fact. Then it shifted to the amounts of ash falling on rooftops & vehicles in urban areas. I don't remember much about deaths except one or two caught in the pyroplastic flow.
Louise & I visited MSH in 1988. I recall being surprised by the number of seemingly distant deaths of campers, hikers, etc. The entire area was still scalded and gray, for lack of a better description. There were small signs of new growth --a few weeds and shin-high saplings coming up between the felled trees. The vista was mostly gray, like the area beside a quarry. Tree trunks with no tops or branches stood like totem poles everywhere.
But the thing that impressed me most was the millions of blast-felled trees all lying in parallel unison as if they had been combed. There were 'cowlicks' where their direction changed along a hillside or ravine as they were pushed and aligned by the flow.