I Survived the Eruption of Mount St. Helens 1980 Read online

  She put her pack on the floor and lifted the camera, aiming it at the room.

  But then a strange noise filled the shack.

  Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

  The hairs on the back of Jess’s neck stood up straight.

  “What was that?”

  Her whole body started to shake. Her teeth rattled.

  But it wasn’t her fear that was making her shake. The whole cabin was vibrating. The walls trembled and the floor rolled up and down under their feet. Jess staggered and fell to her knees. Dad’s camera slipped from her hands and flew across the floor.

  What was happening?

  Skeleton Woman is not real. Skeleton Woman is not real.

  But if it wasn’t Skeleton Woman, who — or what — was it?

  “It’s the curse!” Sam screamed.

  They stumbled out of the cabin. But the shaking was outside, too.

  The ground bucked up and down. The trees swayed back and forth violently.

  Jess and the boys clung to each other for balance as they staggered to the trail. But then crash! a huge tree fell right in front of them.

  They turned to escape in the other direction, but crash! a massive limb hit the ground just feet from where they stood.

  They had to get out of there!

  “Wait! My dad’s camera!” Jess shouted.

  But there was no going back.

  The ground was now splitting apart, like ice breaking on a frozen pond. Clods of dirt flew up. Yawning holes opened in the earth, some deeper than any grave.

  Jess and the twins huddled close together, their heads ducked down low, their arms wrapped tight around each other. More tree limbs crashed to the ground.

  Jess braced herself for the crushing blow of a huge branch hitting her head.

  And then, in a blink, the shaking stopped.

  The forest went mute.

  The only sounds were their own sobbing breaths.

  They stood there too shocked and scared to speak.

  And then, without a word, they joined hands and ran down the trail.

  They jumped over fallen branches and holes in the ground, over roots and rocks. Jess kept looking over her shoulder, sure that Skeleton Woman was after them. She could practically feel the witch’s oven breath huffing at her back. Missy had been right all along: This forest was cursed!

  They were almost to the parking lot when they heard Mr. Rowan shouting for them.

  He came rushing up the trail, moving his burly body way faster than Jess ever thought he could.

  He grabbed all three of them in a bear hug.

  They hadn’t yet caught their breath when a man came hurrying up to them. He had dark brown skin and curly hair and looked to be about Mom’s age.

  “Hey! Are you all okay?”

  Jess and the twins peeled themselves away from Mr. Rowan.

  “We’re all in one piece!” Mr. Rowan called out. “You?”

  “I’m fine,” the man said, dusting off his pants. “That was a pretty strong quake.”

  “Sure was,” Mr. Rowan answered.

  Jess and the twins stared at each other in shock — and relief.

  An earthquake. Of course!

  Earthquakes happened sometimes in Washington State. They even had earthquake drills at school. They’d been so brainwashed by Missy’s dumb story that they weren’t thinking clearly.

  Mr. Rowan introduced himself to the man.

  “Skip Rowan,” he said.

  “Tim Morales,” the man said, shaking Mr. Rowan’s hand and smiling warmly at the twins and Jess.

  “Do you have a cabin here, Tim?” Mr. Rowan asked.

  “Actually, I’m here for work,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket and taking out a business card, which he handed to Mr. Rowan.

  “Dr. Timothy Morales,” Mr. Rowan read, “Department of Seismology, University of Washington. You study earthquakes? Well, you came to the right place today.”

  Dr. Morales nodded. “Actually we’ve detected at least fifty mild earthquakes in this area, all in this past week. They’re coming from directly under St. Helens. At first we weren’t sure what these earthquakes meant. But now we’re certain they’re warning signs.”

  “Warning of what?” Mr. Rowan asked.

  Dr. Morales was quiet for a moment. And then he looked up at St. Helens.

  And what he said next was more unbelievable than any horror story Jess had ever heard.

  “I think Mount St. Helens is about to erupt.”

  Jess and the twins and Mr. Rowan walked through the front door of Clive’s. Mom took one look at them and nearly dropped the coconut cake she was carrying. Jess knew they must look bad, streaked with dirt and covered with scratches from their run down the mountain.

  “What on earth?” Mom cried, putting the cake on the counter and hurrying over to them.

  Mom listened with wide eyes as they told her about the quake. She wrapped her arms around Jess and hugged her tight. Jess opened her mouth ready to tell her about Dad’s camera. But then Mr. Rowan announced the big news.

  “We heard that St. Helens might erupt.”

  Mom stared at him in shock.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Who would say such a thing?”

  A voice from the end of the counter called out.

  “I would.”

  Mom had been so busy fussing over Jess and the twins that she hadn’t noticed Dr. Morales, who’d walked in behind them. Mr. Rowan had invited him to join everyone at Clive’s, and he’d followed them down the highway in his car — that beat-up Toyota they’d spotted in the parking lot. Turned out that living through an earthquake made people fast friends.

  “Tim here is a volcano expert,” Mr. Rowan said. “He works at a lab in Seattle.”

  Mom looked Dr. Morales up and down with surprise. “You’re a scientist?”

  With his overgrown curls and faded jeans, Dr. Morales looked more like a singer in a rock band than a person who worked in a laboratory.

  “I’m not wearing my scientist uniform today.” Dr. Morales laughed. “But yes. I’ve been studying St. Helens for the past eight years.”

  Mom sent Jess and the twins to get cleaned up. When they returned, they found Mom and the men sitting in a booth. There were mugs of hot chocolate waiting for Jess and the boys. There were no other customers in the diner, so Mom was free to sit with them.

  “But I didn’t think St. Helens could erupt,” Mom said.

  “I didn’t either,” Mr. Rowan said. “I figured it was the kind of volcano that’s dead, or whatever that word is …”

  “You mean extinct,” Dr. Morales said. “But no. St. Helens is not extinct. It’s just been dormant, which means it’s been quiet.”

  “But it’s always been so peaceful,” Mom said.

  “It has been perfectly quiet, for one hundred and twenty-three years,” Dr. Morales said. “The last time it erupted was in 1857. But St. Helens is the most active volcano in the West. It has erupted dozens of times over the past few thousand years. There have been massive explosions, lava flows, avalanches, and mudslides. One eruption about five hundred years ago buried much of the valley under about two hundred feet of rock and ash and mud.”

  “What about Cedar?” Mom asked.

  “Cedar is up on a ridge. And I don’t think any of the eruptions have reached this far. It’s a safe place.”

  “Good,” Mom said with a nervous smile. “I was about to start packing up.”

  “Amazing that nobody around here knows about all this,” Mr. Rowan said, shaking his head.

  “Actually, people did know,” Dr. Morales said. “Native Americans had been living here in the Cascades for about seven thousand years before the American settlers arrived. They knew St. Helens was dangerous and stayed away from it. They wouldn’t even fish from the lakes on the mountain. The Cowlitz tribe called this mountain Lawetlat’la. It means ‘mountain of fire.’”

  The words seemed to hang in the air.

  “What’s the most dangerous part of an eruption?” Mom asked.

  “Lava?” said Sam, with just a little too much excitement.

  “Lava is dangerous,” said Mr. Morales. “But around here, the bigger dangers are mudslides and rock avalanches. And I worry about the pyroclastic surge. That’s a wave of hot air that explodes out of the volcano. It’s truly devastating. That’s what happened in the eruption of Mount Pelée.”

  “Never heard of Mount Pelée,” Mr. Rowan said.

  None of them had.

  “What happened?” Eddie asked.

  “I don’t know if you want to hear about that,” Dr. Morales said. “It’s a grim story.”

  “We do! We do!” Sam begged.

  “Go ahead,” Mom said.

  And so, as the hot chocolates grew cold, Dr. Morales told the story of the deadliest volcanic eruption in the twentieth century.

  “The year was 1902, on the Caribbean island of Martinique,” Dr. Morales began. “The island’s capital is the city of Saint-Pierre, which is is right on the Caribbean Sea. And it sits right at the base of Mount Pelée.

  “Pelée was a fairy-tale kind of mountain, with bright green slopes covered with trees.”

  Like St. Helens, Jess thought.

  “Few people realized that it was actually a volcano. It had rumbled a few times over the centuries. But it had been silent for more than fifty years.

  “And then, in April of 1902, Pelée woke up. All through that month, there were hundreds of very small earthquakes.”

  “Like the ones today?” Eddie asked.

  Dr. Morales nodded.

  “There was also the strong smell of sulfur gas seeping from deep inside the Earth. That gas builds up as a volcano is becoming more active, and it can leak out of the Earth. It has a horrific smell, like rotten eggs. Around Pelée, the stench became so strong that people fainted in the streets. Horses collapsed.

  “But few had any idea that the quakes and the sulfur were warning signs that Pelée was going to erupt. The science of volcanoes was unknown back then. People simply didn’t understand that they were in danger.

  “That changed in early May, when a small eruption sent ash and glowing rocks into the air. A few days later, part of the volcano broke away, and a river of boiling mud and ash roared down the mountain at eighty miles an hour.”

  “That’s faster than my truck,” Mr. Rowan said.

  “Some mudslides can travel even faster. That one killed more than one hundred and fifty people.” Dr. Morales said.

  He looked at Jess and the twins.

  “The story gets more grisly. Maybe I should stop here.”

  “No!” Sam shouted. For him, this was even better than a Mariners game.

  Dr. Morales looked at Mom, who nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Because next come the snakes.”

  “Snakes?” Mom said.

  “The earthquakes disturbed thousands of snakes that had been living on the mountain. They came slithering down into Saint-Pierre. Some of them were venomous six-foot-long pit vipers. Hundreds of people died from bites.”

  “Goodness, I’m going to have nightmares about this,” Mom said.

  “Sorry,” Dr. Morales said. “I’m getting carried away. I should stop.”

  But no way would Sam let him.

  “It’s all right,” Mom said. “You might as well tell us how this ends.”

  “I think we can take it,” Mr. Rowan agreed.

  “So at this point, people were terrified, as you can imagine,” Dr. Morales continued. “Many people left by ship. But most couldn’t afford to flee, or had no place to go. And the leaders of Saint-Pierre kept telling people the worst was over.”

  “I’m guessing they were wrong,” Mom said with a cringe.

  “Very wrong,” Dr. Morales said.

  “The real disaster happened on May 8, a cloud of sulfur blanketed the city. First there was a massive explosion. Pumice and mud rained down. And then a wave of searing hot gas and ash exploded out of the mountain and into Saint-Pierre.”

  Dr. Morales took a breath.

  “Within seconds, thirty thousand people were dead.”

  Jess gasped. And the boys’ chins practically hit the table.

  “Thirty thousand people?” Mom said slowly. “How is that even possible?”

  “That was the pyroclastic surge. Imagine the wind in a hurricane, but with air that’s scalding hot. Then add toxic gas and ground-up rock and ash. The heat is so extreme that it burns everything in its path. People died instantly, without even knowing what happened to them.”

  Nobody spoke for a moment, and even Sam looked queasy. The only sound was the gurgle of the soda fountain.

  “And you’re saying that the same thing could happen here?” Mom asked.

  Dr. Morales nodded. “It could. But luckily, there aren’t thirty thousand people living right at the base of St. Helens.”

  That was true. The mountain was surrounded by forests, with just a few towns dotting the valley.

  A chill came over Jess, even though she was warm and snug sitting between the twins.

  For her entire life, St. Helens had been the beautiful mountain rising into the sky. She’d grown up hiking its winding trails, diving into its cold lakes, and fishing for trout in its streams. Just looking at St. Helens out her window made her feel calm, as if it were watching over her somehow.

  Okay, maybe somewhere in the back of her mind she’d known that St. Helens was a volcano. Everyone around here knew that. But Jess never imagined that it was a real volcano, a killer that could explode.

  “When do you think this eruption is going to happen?” Mom asked.

  Dr. Morales shook his head.

  “It’s hard to say for sure. But I do believe it’s going to erupt violently. And I think it’s going to happen soon.”

  Jess couldn’t sleep.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined St. Helens exploding, and then a flaming wind sweeping down the mountain.

  Finally she took her quilt and went into Mom’s room.

  Mom was awake, too, and moved over in bed to make space for Jess.

  “Don’t be worried,” Mom said. “You heard what Dr. Morales said. We’re safe here in Cedar.”

  “I know, but I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “I can’t, either,” Mom said. “But I think we need to put it out of our minds. Maybe Dr. Morales has just watched too many disaster movies.”

  Jess smiled. “That part about the snakes was a bit much.”

  Mom giggled a little.

  “But do you really think St. Helens is going to erupt?” Jess asked. “Could that actually happen?”

  Mom turned toward Jess.

  She moved closer, so their noses were almost touching.

  “Whatever happens, you and I will make it through. Like we always have, and like we always will.”

  Mom said the words without a shred of doubt.

  Jess looked at Mom. She still needed to tell her about the camera.

  But suddenly Jess was so tired.

  She closed her eyes. And with Mom’s calming words whispering through her mind, Jess fell asleep.

  The next morning, Jess and Mom had barely finished breakfast when the twins came barging through their door.

  “We’re in the newspaper!” Sam cried.

  “You are?” Jess said with surprise.

  “Not us,” Eddie cried. “St. Helens!”

  They held up the Seattle paper, with a headline screaming out from the front page.

  MOUNT ST. HELENS AWAKES!

  Jess couldn’t believe that their mountain was on the front page of an important newspaper like the Times.

  At school that day, their teacher, Mr. Daley, canceled their fractions quiz. Instead, he gave them a lesson about volcanoes. He explained that the Earth was like a big ball of candy, with different layers. The outer shell was the crust, and it was about eighteen miles thick. Underneath was an ocean of fiery, molten rock. In some spots, there were cracks in the crust, and that’s where volcanoes formed.

  Jess was shocked to learn that there were fifteen hundred volcanoes around the world that could be active. And fourteen of them were right in the Cascades.

  How did she not know any of this? None of the kids in the class knew.

  On the blacktop, nobody wanted to play kickball. They all nervously eyed the mountain, which rose up in the distance. Kids gathered around as Sam repeated Dr. Morales’s story of Mount Pelée. He explained about the warning signs — the rotten-egg stench of sulfur gas, the mudslides, and, of course, the pit vipers. He told them about the fiery hurricane wind that swept down the mountain.

  The kids listened with wide eyes and slack jaws. This story was way better than the legend of Skeleton Woman.

  On Tuesday, Missy saw a garter snake slithering through the grass behind the blacktop.

  “It’s a pit viper!” she shrieked.

  Other kids freaked out, too. It took Mr. Daley the rest of recess to calm them down and to convince them that there were no pit vipers in Washington State — or anywhere in the United States.

  Over the next few days, the police set up roadblocks on Spirit Lake Memorial Highway. They wouldn’t let anyone within ten miles of the mountain, not even loggers.

  The whole town seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

  And then, on Friday, something did.

  It was near the end of the school day, and Jess was gathering her notebooks for dismissal. Suddenly a loud boom rattled their desks and sent Mr. Daley’s coffee mug crashing to the floor.

  Twenty-one heads turned and stared out the window.

  They had a perfect view of St. Helens rising up over the ridge.

  It didn’t look peaceful anymore.

  Pale gray smoke was gushing out of the top.

  “It’s erupting!” Sam cried.

  But the loud boom and gush of smoke wasn’t an eruption, not a real one.

  Dr. Morales explained this to them that night, when he stopped by the diner.

  Mom was behind the counter, and Jess and the twins were at a booth, munching on French fries and trying to focus on their homework. Mr. Rowan was working late, and Mrs. Rowan was still with the twins’ grandmother.