For a complete television schedule, visit booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. Television for serious readers. Now, we kick off the weekend with steve olsen he recalls the eruption of mount st. Helens in 1980. [inaudible] everybody [inaudible] on a real Beautiful Day that we can manage it. Thank you so much for coming. Before we get started a few housekeeping rules you can take the time right now to silence your cell phones. While you have it out enis it[inaudible] you can sign up for the great events going on with steve olsen. Hes going to talk about his book and im excited for him to do that. In his book, steve has history and Science Behind eruption of mount st. Helens with account of what happened to those people who lived it and those who died. As i said steve has particular connections. One of the big stories as events director im sarah by the way. I dont know if i introduced myself. As events director is bringing to our local connections you can see that tonight. So please join me in welcoming steve olsen to kramerbooks. Ive 9 11 given a talk here before, but i really can hardly begin to tell you how delighted i am to finally be doing this. When my wife and i were newlyweds in 1980s it was we came for our date nights, and we introduced two of our friends to each other rights over there who are now married. And luv in live in oregon not far from where we lived in seattle, so this book sort of has a lot of great memories for me. And memories im going to start tonight because the eruption of mount st. Helens which was in that era on sunday morning may 18th, 1980 was one of the events was that so dramatic for people who have a connection to the nest we tend to remember where we were. When we heard the news like was writing while i was working on this book people would tell me sunday morning. Well, i was coming back from church and i heard on the car radio that it interrupted or people would say oh, yeah theres an indication of where we were. When i say i was barbecuing in my backyard. I know where i was. I grew up in Washington State. But in may of 1980, i was living here in washington, d. C. , and we were about to get married my wife and i three weeks away so anniversary is a Good Opportunity to remember that my anniversary is coming up. And there are we got married in rhode island, and my grandmother who still lived in small town where i lived, where i grew up, brought back from washington, down witness stand from the volcano shot back ash from the wedsing because she knew everybody would be interested in seeings it when they were there. I figured it was a good thing that i was on the east coast because i was exactly the kind of kid. Interested in science, and interested in geology and geological spectacle. I remember one of the kids who says, when the volcano started shaking in late winter of 1980 i would have said i really need to see that. So i would have grabbed a friend and qowf jumped in a car and headed down i5 turned off on spirit lake highway and driven up to see small puffs of ash that would come out of the volcano and what it first we were awakened if i did that on may 17th and friends would have been camping there i wouldnt be here today. 57 people dpried that the eruption that sunday morning. Marmingt of them were ass fix yaited by ash. Some were blown off ridge tops or swept away in the mud flows. Couple of people were crushed by tree that fell on them. Some poem were burned by the hot gases that were in the eruption. And only three of those 57 were inned that had been designated in dangerous areas. The only one breaking the law was one victim we tepid to remember best from the volcano, we remember ken harry r. Truman who refuse to leave husband lodge just four miles away from the summit down by spirit lake. Too close where danger was too small. Where eruption that was bigger than geologists had expected, and what can we learn from the tragedy that these 57 deaths living in a world of geological hazards those were questions that inspired me to write this book when i moved back from seattle years ago. So i discovered this amazing, rich, interconnected story. A story about politics, and money and science. But its also a story about logging and its a story about the establishment of the National Forest, and its a story about the Transcontinental Railroad so its i read the book its it as big as the United States itself and came together on that one day and one place in may of 19 80. So the story began in rock island, illinois which is a town on the Mississippi River about 150 miles west of chicago. And its so hot in here because if you have a napkin for me im going to figured that i would come back to washington, d. C. On the one day hot and large. So this down in rock island is where a immigrant moved 1856, and he took a job at a lumberyard to the border had previous jobs in a brewery and on a railroad. So it was intelligence and friendly an ambitious and he rose quickly through ranks of the lumberyard in my readiness to work i never could wanted hours or knocked off until i had finished what i had in hand. So if youve never seen his brotherinlaw. Thank you. Ill pass it around when im done with them. [laughter] we didnt see and his brotherinlaw had bought them and began to expand it. First they brought log it is from forest of wisconsin and minnesota and put those through the saw mills but doing this putting that back there. Get back to warehouser here. Preview of the rest of the talk. [laughter] warehouser knew that the real money lay in buying land and chopping down tree ares on that land so again by stands a beautiful, white, white pine in the Chippewa River in wisconsin, and with the must be money he made from chopping down trees he bought more in wisconsin and minnesota. He was in a incredibly businesses man an he was a lumber man. He said no other man in america knows so much about pine as he does. And wonder where warehouser moved his family including seven children from rock island to st. Paul minnesota to be near the center of his logging operation moved up the mississippi as trees of wisconsin became more cutover the center offing of logging moved north. James j. Hill who was another remarkable businessman and visionary who was just about to complete the great more than railroad from st. Paul to seattle. Over there houses on 7th avenue were still there. If you have a chance to see the james tail house you think an amazing monument really its a wonderful place to visit. So the two men quickly became friends they were actually very similar, and often spent evenings at each others houses. Problem is that wares houser after a life spent in woods had a tent city to sleep early and one seemed like he never slept at a all. So the families would often go by the living rooms and a would be engaged in some monologue and warehouser next to him, but didnt bother hill. He always liked to talk. Hell face a major problem, an he needed money to pay off a bond issue for the railroad but at that point he had way more land than he had must money. Not only was a Northern Railway but Northern Pacific railway that ran from duluth, minnesota, to tacoma. In taking control of the Northern Pacific he came to control the immense land grants of the Northern Pacific. So thftion an immense amount of property that the federal government gave to the railroads as an inducement to build raillines. Both of transcontinental and in particular parts of United States. So in return for building the mine from duluth to tacoma, Northern Pacific received 4 million acres of western land greater than size of florida. In north pac received for the line had built from essentially from portland oregon, to tacoma, washington, between 1870 and 1873 so that parallels i5 today. And the land ran extended out 40 miles on either side of the railroad so mount st. Helens is 35 miles east of i5 thats why when the mountain erupted in is 1980 that top of the volcano was still owned by the railroad. On january 3rd, 1900 so just a few days into the new century warehouser and hill announced largest private land purchases in u. S. History. For 6 dollars an acre warehouser and Business Partners bought a 100 acres of timber land in southwestern Washington State, an with that purchase, along with subsequent prmps they made to fill in the area of the land grants. Warehouser bought all of the land between what is today i5 and mount st. Helens one of the greatest investments after correcting for inflation i corrected in the book that warehouser and Business Partners needed every one collar that was how much the timber of the land was that they bought. Fast forward to 1980 on march 20th of that year they have a magnitude 4. 2 earthquake beneath mount st. Helens so in Pacific Northwest we get plenty of earthquakes but we usually get one or two and then they quiet down been but that didnt happen in this case. After that earthquake there were more and more earthquakes until so many of them they ran together on the seismic detector you couldnt tell them apart anymore. So at this point they flocked to volcano were sure that it was on the move against the mountain and basically nothing was happening aboveground and then about a week after the initial earthquake, a small crater opened up on the top of mount st. Helens this was the first sign of that crater here and these puffs of ash began toe merge from the the crater. So mount st. Helens last active in 1857 so been enactive for 123 years and in march of 19 80 it came back to land. So renewed activity was just a national sensation. People came to Washington State not only from United States but from all over the world to see this volcano. That last pee ropings of a volcano in the United States has been in Northern California just a picture of the peak in 1917 but very few people saw this eruption it was in a part of the country that was hard to get to that was not the case with mount st. Helens one day there were 70 aircraft that were circling the mountain they have to brings in air Traffic Control to make sure everybody was evacuated. At First Federal and state officials sought limit access to volcano but putting up road blocks on major highways. But it was a time with this road block they came you under presse from people who own property or businesses on other soiftd road block so they would exert pressure on officials to move road block and gradually these road blocks got closer and closer to the mountain. But the bigger problem is that the main roads around mount st. Helens are a tiny fraction of all of the roads around mountain. So warehouser have been logging area. Between i5 and mountain for decades, and in that process, the company had built thousands of miles of logging that threaded so anyone who wanted to get close to the mountain could drive up to spirit lake highway and turn up a roads and climb up to a ridge lune in clear cut was a clear view of the mountain and set up your camp and stay there for as long as you wanted. There was no problem. So by the middle of april governor officials realized they needed a better way of controlling access so they took a map of the area and began drawing lines around the volcano but the first thing they did is they drew a line along ridge line to the north of the volcano and along eastern edge of they figured that if fig came out of the volcano it wasnt going to get over ridge line. They were safe with that. But they continue the line down to the south on sort of a southern flank of a volcano but they have a problem on west side between north and west side of the volcano they didnt want to extend into ware housesser property because at that point he was culting last of old group of trees rooght there by volcano. Warehouser wanted to close down trees and handle trees ten feet across gigantic trees that were there. So government officials did on west side of the mountain is they simply drew the line between warehouse per property to the west and the land of the National Forest to the east. And that area they called the are the zone. Everything inside that solid line is Law Enforcement and scientists could go in that area. The problem was that the red zone that if came only two miles away from the center of the volcano. So then the officials drew another line that generally followed roads about ten miles of roads and other ridge lines ten miles away from the peak. And you can go in this area that was called blue zone if you have permission to do that and other people working this that area could coit. But on west side of the mountain they it it does not to do that o not go into warehouser property for all loggers that were ring two there to get permission to go there. So thrftion a red zone. Retd zone and blue zone right together. About the same time license were being drawn a bulge began to form on northern and northwestern flank of the volcano. It seemed to be caused business magma that was pooling underneath the volcano and pushing out the side and this was having very dramatically. This bulge growing by five feet per day. And volknologist didnt know what was going to happen with this. They said it could take forever and cascading down the mountain at some point towards spirit lack underneath the bulge but general consensus was that that it would be an avalanche that nothing else would happen. And with bulge it happen haded to be on the side of the volcano where danger zones were closest to the volcano to speak. So that was essentially the situation on the evening of saturday may 17th. It was a first clear weekend after a cloudy and rainy spring and that evening two dozen people were getting ready to spend the night in the area north of mount st. Helens. Harry truman who had refused to leave his lodge was getting ready for bed on the edge of spirit lake, and again about four miles away from the mountain. Portland General Electric named george were in their cabin a couple of miles down the tiew la river from spirit lack so they have permission and said they were doing a photographic study of the mountain from their had deck because they could see the mountain from their deck. Although many of their people who own cabins around them in that area thoughts there was a ruse that they were doing this just so that they could use their cabin. But they still is got permission to be there on the weekends. The next closest person to the volcano was geologist dave johnson who was keeping watch on the volcano from that ridgeline about five miles north of the peak. Of course johnson had never been to this location until the day before eruption. He was filling in for a colleague who had to go that weefng to talk with his graduate advisors in california about an Educational Program so he was actually quite worried about being this close to volcano and barely escaped volcanic eruption in alaska and saiding no was acting so ill go there someone can spell me the next day. On the ridge seven miles away from the volcano was a photographer from the columbia newspaper and he was taking photographs for National Geographic as part of a project that theyve been doing. Doing a time lapse study of the mountain. But that budget was scheduled to conclude after that weekend because something hasnt been happening and not worth it to keep taking photographs at this time. On the second ridge north of mount st. Helens there was a photograph in vancouver named rhee blackburn, but the other one on Northern Ridge was jerry martin who was a retired navy operator with Radio Diversity service so Washington State at the time didnt have enough money to be able to put monitors close to the mountain and warn communities down stream if anything happened with the volcano. So a group of amateurs decided to set up this network to keep an eye on the volcano. Jerry martin was closest to the volcano. But other people who were stationed around the volcano. So past the third ridge away from mountain where john and krsty a newlywed couple from washington small had town i read about this in the book and they were camped at fawn lake which had a north side of the ridge. They was a set or for warehouser during the weekend working a few miles away from that. And he was three or 400 loggers who would have died it erupted on a weekday rather than a weekend. Kristy ran a forklift at the warehouser mill 25 miles away from the volcano. They were married 7 months that may, and theyre friends and trying to have children that they couldnt even see the volcano is from their campground. It was just out of sight over a ridge on the other side of the lake. Finally three separate groups camping on green river. A river about 12 or 13 miles to the north of the volcano. On the west side it was a group of about 6 kids you know, calm them millennialses now in their 20s, from a long view area and up there doing kinds of thingings that we used to do when we were a kid with a volcano. Drinking beer, roasting corn on the cob and steaks, with things like that. On eastern side of the green river there were two trends named clark who had ridden horses up the ridge and camped on the river and by them was family the moores. Mike and lew, and they would a four yeertd daughter bonnie an three month old baby named tara. They were taking their girls on their very first camping trip. Ill tell you a little bit more about the moores in a minute. On sunday morning, may 18th the sun rose at 5 36 into a completely cloudless sky. On a ridge just north of mount st. Helens johnson took a distance, and bulge expanded and then it contracted a little bit. At 8 32 something in the mountain gave way. There was a couple of geologists who amazing coincidence about it but there was two who were fly, happened to be flying over the mountain at this exact moment and when they said they saw is that crack appear on the mountain. This line from east to west and the whole north side of the mountain just started cascading down. And out of where so this avalanche finally occurred bu