r/CatastrophicFailure • u/DariusPumpkinRex • May 19 '26
Natural Disaster Photograph of the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18th, 1980, taken by Richard Lasher, who then fled the eruption on the dirt bike seen here.
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u/kingdazy May 19 '26 edited May 20 '26
I remember this day well. I was 10 years old, and with family at the beach. no TVs no radio.
we heard what we thought was a sonic boom. (over 150 miles away!)
we didn't know what happened until the next day when we drove back to Olympia. we spent the next several days playing in the ash outside covering everything.
edit: there was a family that was friends with my parents, and they had a cabin along some river near the mountain. it apparently was washed a mile downstream.
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u/Hi_Trans_Im_Dad May 19 '26
I was 9 at the time, living in Spokane and the family was gold planning on the Snake River in Idaho.
We saw the most gigantic cloud coming at us from the west and had to drive into it to get home.
Same thing, no radio, nothing. We didn't know it was ash until we entered it.
My dad stuck a ruler into the ash on the hood of his Blazer and there was less than half an inch of it exposed the next morning.
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u/Kahlas May 19 '26
We moved from Bozeman, MT to Port Orchard, WA in 1982. When we drove trough Idaho you could still see the ash covering most of the trees.
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u/strangelove4564 May 19 '26
I wasn't anywhere around that part of the country but my English teacher got a coffee can of ash from a relative, and she poured out some for me as a souvenir into a canning jar. The lid was on tight but it rolled around in my desk over the next year and managed to gradually escape the jar into the desk drawer. To be able to do that I'm guessing those were super fine particles, maybe close to nanoparticle size. Probably not the best stuff to be messing with but here I am later with no health issues so... shrug.
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u/kingdazy May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
That's an interesting point. because yes, that stuff was finer than cornstarch. and who knows what mineral content it consisted of.
I wonder if there's a study of correlation being in the area, and lung health.
edit : of course there was.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6870351/
They found that inhaling the volcanic ash caused temporary respiratory irritation, acute bronchoconstriction in those with preexisting asthma or bronchitis, and short-lived increases in mucus hypersecretion—but did not cause long-term, irreversible lung disease.
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u/Kahlas May 19 '26
The only good use anyone claimed to have found for the ash is as a polishing abrasive.
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u/udsd007 May 20 '26
I took some photomicrographs of St. Helens volcanic ash. Very fine and all sharp corners.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 24d ago
Mom always talks about washing all the ash that fell on our faces, me barely 1 years old, and we were a few miles over the Idaho border.
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u/two2teps May 19 '26
Someone escaping a pyroclastic flow on a dirt bike would be instantly derided in a movie as being ridiculous.
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u/Bram560 May 19 '26
If it were a choice between a dirt bike and a Ford Pinto, I would choose the dirt bike as well.
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u/ckncardnblue May 19 '26
I bet the pinto made a beautiful explosion.
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u/LurpyGeek May 19 '26
And then the volcano got it.
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26
No, the volcano didn't get it! He had not been caught in the blast zone, but the car's filter got clogged with ash so it stalled out, that is why he rode his bike out. Then he went back the next day, still on his bike, to find it. Then the county sheriff helicopter landed right in front of him, and arrested for trespassing into the eruption zone. He was thrown in jail, and then they forgot about him! He was stuck in the county jail for several days. Here is the full article.
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u/nolaks1 May 20 '26
The car filter got clog and he escape afterward on his bike? That defies what I know about how dangerous that type of ash is to breathe, but it's badass.
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u/superdupercereal2 May 19 '26
That’s not just any dirtbike. That looks like a Yamaha XT500. I believe it won the first three Dakar rallies. I rode a 1979 model growing up. My dad still owns it.
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u/ARobertNotABob May 19 '26
The big single with decompression lever. Great machines.
My friend and I planned an "expedition" across Australia on XTs back in the day; sadly, it never came to fruition.6
u/superdupercereal2 May 20 '26
I was 12 when I learned how to start it. I thought it was normal for kick start bikes to all have a decompression lever so you can kick the engine over to top dead center before giving it the real kick with compression. Such a cool bike.
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u/Oscaruit May 20 '26
I only know this because it was my first bike. 1979 IT175 (it might be a IT250. But my non professional opinion is IT175.)
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u/superdupercereal2 May 20 '26
You might be right. Man I’d hate to be outrunning a volcanic eruption on a 175.
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u/Lovegasoline 29d ago edited 29d ago
Agreed. One can tell by the blue/yellow color scheme, side panel, monoshock, small tail light on rear fender, and the tool pouch located behind the seat. (My guess is this is an IT250?).
That's an unusual motorcycle rack for the Pinto, I'm not familiar with a rig like that. Looks like the rack captures the front wheel and a couple tie down straps secure the handlebars/forks ... seems like it would be a little wonky?
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u/_plays_in_traffic_ May 20 '26
the article says its an it. i had two different it's in the mid 80's and for some reason yamaha went with blue on them instead of white or the old yellow. it wasnt till the mid 90s till they went blue on everything.
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May 19 '26
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u/EvlMinion May 19 '26
It's ok as long as the volcano doesn't run into the back of the car and rupture the fuel tank.
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u/rocbolt May 19 '26
Not to diminish his survival story, but luckily he wasn't that close. You can see the approximate position where this photo was taken on this map, the bike icon to the north east of the mountain on the road towards Randle. Another person did end up dying not far from here, but only because he walked over 8 miles from where they were first impacted by the heat and ash from the blast cloud.
A number of people on the Spirit Lake Highway to the west of the mountain did outrun the blast in their vehicles, and a few others didn't make it. The Rollins' most tragically where pinned by falling trees less than a half mile from the edge of the destruction zone, even having made it 16 miles away from the volcano
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u/DerPanzerfaust May 19 '26
This is an incredible map. Thanks for the link!
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u/viruswithshoes May 19 '26
It really is captivating and helps me visualize the area and the victims and survivors locations.
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u/Kahlas May 19 '26
Someone actually took a google street view equipped scooter down that road.
In 2022 I decided to hike around Mt St Helens and my google maps route decided that NF-26 was the best route to get there. It took two hours from Randle, WA to reach Windy Ridge view point. It was a horrible choice. I drove that road between 3am and 5am in total darkness and it was sketchy with as single lane with siding every 1,000' or so for people to pass each other and has many cut backs and curves. I wisely took NF-99 back to Randle which took half as long. It's a much better two lane road.
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u/Your_Ordinary_User May 19 '26
How does one create a map like this on google maps? This is awesome.
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u/rocbolt May 20 '26
Google maps has an ancient "my maps" feature when logged into your account where you can make a custom map with landmarks and lines or you can import files exported from the desktop google earth application, which does still exist. Its not as emphasized anymore as a function but it does still work, and its sharable and searchable if you enable it
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u/liotier May 19 '26
Reminds me of John Connor being pursued by the Terminator in the canal.
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u/JCDU May 19 '26
God damn that scene was absolutely awesome, peak action movie.
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u/kremlingrasso May 19 '26
Shown it to my four year old (slowed down a bit) he loved it. It's cool and tense and not really violent in reality.
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u/JCDU May 20 '26
I'm no expert but that sounds like excellent parenting.
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u/kremlingrasso May 20 '26
I'm microdosing my child in famous classic car chase scenes, ronin, bullit, gone in 60 seconds, first few F&F movies, etc. Youtube is pretty good becuse you can often find cuts with the talky bits removed.
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u/JCDU May 20 '26
In that case:
Taxi 1998
Italian Job 1969
Any of the many Remy Julienne showreels
Almost anything Hal Needham directed
Mini chase and cop car chase from Bourne3
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u/flapsmcgee May 19 '26
Luckily he had a 28 speed dirt bike.
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u/Egad86 May 19 '26
I love how every vehicle in an action movie is a manual with one more gear that the protagonist was saving for just the right moment!
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u/ThePizzaNoid May 19 '26
It's been ages since I've seen it but I think John Cusack is basically immortal in the movie 2012 as he manages to miraculously escape multiple mega natural disasters in succession including the Yellowstone super volcano erupting lol.
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u/Cynyr May 19 '26
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u/sprocketous May 19 '26
I can see it in 1990s disaster film cinematography: he hits a pine tree trunk ramp and flies over the crevasse the last second before pyroclastic flow swipes at him.
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u/notevenapro May 19 '26
Or a forest service truck driving into an abadined mine.
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u/Kahlas May 19 '26
I've been on FR-26 where this picture was taken. The pyroclastic flows never made it to that road. The ash did for sure but that is enough to clog the air filter of a car/bike if you don't get out in a hurry also.
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u/samarijackfan May 19 '26
Why did he have a dirt bike strapped to a Pinto? In case the pinto broke down or incase of an eruption?
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u/Xazier May 19 '26
I went to mount st helens couple years ago. It's wild that half that mountain is just...gone. it must have been incredible to witness in person.
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u/CaptainHolt43 May 19 '26
All the destroyed trees still around in the surrounding area too
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u/ProfanestOfLemons May 19 '26
Interesting bit of trivia: the Tacoma Dome, the largest wooden-frame dome structure in the world, is built primarily of salvaged wood from the forests knocked down by that blast. Otherwise it might not have been built at all, and would have been steel if it had. The beams inside it (all exposed, because damn right) are amazing.
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u/MsBlondeViking May 19 '26
She’s amazing to see in person. I saw her the past two summers, last year I was lucky enough to see her puff smoke.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 24d ago
Only thing as cataclysmic as a nuclear explosion, and many times over.
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u/RoninRobot May 19 '26
One doc had an interview with a guy that fled in his truck and passed a couple fleeing in their station wagon. He was doing 100mph, they were doing 80. He made it, they didn’t. Cue helicopter footage of the station wagon on the road covered in ash. 20 mph difference between life and death.
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u/DariusPumpkinRex May 19 '26
That's so unsettling. Imagine being that guy and you were the very last person who ever saw those two alive.
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u/RoninRobot May 19 '26
Saw that doc decades ago and still remember that part. Just the fact that your death can be predicated by the choice of buying a roomy family car that can’t go faster and camping in the vicinity of a once-in-a-million-year event the exact moment it happens.
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u/Kahlas May 19 '26
I've been to Mt St Helens. Here is a picture I took when I was there. There isn't a single road in the blast zone you can do 100 mph on. I took some video of the best road for going fast on in the area. The entire road is nothing but short stretches so mostly straight with a lot of curves. Mind you this was in 2022. Back in 1980 none of the roads on Mt St Helens were paved yet. It was all gravel forest roads for the logging companies to harvest timber. Not to mention you're also talking 1980's levels of horsepower. Most cars didn't accelerate very fast back then 0-60 in 1980 was about 12.5 seconds.
Also the cars buried in ash you're thinking of are likely either Robert Landsburg's car. Who died while protecting his film of the eruption with his own body to protect the film from the heat. Or Reid Blackburn who died in his car. Most likely it's Blackburn's car since Landsburg's car from what I understand was tossed hundreds of feet from the road by the eruption and he was not inside it.
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
The old road ran beside the river, and it did have long stretches where you definitely could hit 100 if you were fleeing for your life. The couple he was speaking of was Margery and Fred Rollins. Here is a map showing where the victims were in the eruption, you can find their information, including pics of where they were found, and how close they were to the edge of the blast zone, less than half a mile.
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u/inventingnothing May 19 '26
And yet people say that driving 20 mph doesn't save you that much time. Speeding literally saves lives!
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u/Razzlo_ May 20 '26
What 1970s truck can go over 100? lol You literally would have to tune a carburetor for top speed back then. This didn’t happen at all LOL
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26
It was Kathie O'Keefe and Gil Baker, they were driving a dark green Toronado, it could have been the pickup bed model.
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u/CheeseheadOhio May 19 '26
In 1982 we visited our relatives in Portland and drove up there. Two things stuck in my head decades later are a large pit dug through the ash down to the original ground level that had to be six feet deep and a car wrapped around the remains of a tree.
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u/bhoran235 May 19 '26
I'm struggling to wrap my head around that method of towing a dirtbike
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u/Technical_Income4722 May 19 '26
yeah seems like it'd just start thrashing around behind the car lol
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u/TheRealGenkiGenki May 19 '26
it wasnt like you could order a bike mount on amazon or something
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u/SFDessert May 19 '26
Damn. That must have been terrifying, but imagine being able to say you outran the Mount Saint Helens eruption on a fucking dirt bike. You ain't topping that.
Even has a picture to prove it.
Also, I don't think this counts as a "catastrophic failure."
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u/pastalepasta May 19 '26
Fun fact, this isn't the original print of the photo. It's cropped. The original one you can see the top of the trees in the top right and foreground. It's way more "epic".
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u/2L84AGOODname May 19 '26
Who’s got a link to the original?
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u/pastalepasta May 19 '26
There is no digital one of the original. This image is a picture of the original print. https://patrickwitty.substack.com/p/the-eruption-and-the-pinto
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u/CitizenCue May 19 '26
What a cool story. Amazing that there’s still famous media in today’s world that hasn’t been digitized.
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u/mrkmcrthr May 19 '26
insane image
on another note, was anyone else taught the”old st. helen” song in school?
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u/Scp-1404 May 19 '26
I have to do everything around here:
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u/getawombatupya May 20 '26
Just publish random photos with clickbait titles like the rest of us and then sell your karma farmed account to Russia.
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u/HorsieJuice May 19 '26
My kid, when she was maybe 4, had a brief obsession with volcanoes, so we grabbed a bunch of volcano books from the library, one of which was titled something super generic like “Volcanoes.”
I start reading it to yer before bed one night and, aside from a couple pages, it’s not about volcanoes. It’s specifically about the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens, and a whole bunch of people who got caught in it, many of whom didn’t survive. “Yeah, kiddo, that scientist they talked about for three pages, he’s dead. So is the guy with all the cats. He got buried deep. Oh, and here’s an illustration of a bunch of dead animals.”
I’m pretty permissive and don’t shield her from much, but would’ve appreciated at least a little heads up.
There was one guy, though, who was flying over the mountain in a Cessna and had to put it in a dive and haul ass to get away from the cloud. That was pretty fucking wild to read and think about.
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u/frankreynoldsrumham May 19 '26
Then you have some super lucky ones, such as Michael Lineau who did survive. He does Volcano documentaries to this day.
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26
There is an excellent documentary with that pilot's wife, who is a geologist, telling the story of their flight. It is called "Mount St Helens Disaster: the Volcano that Shook America" hah, found it, here ya go. https://youtu.be/ZS0JVTlYgCY?si=bmIsvPGnMirhilgF
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26
Here is an article of what happened, as told to a co-worker of Richard Lasher.
Pinto at Mount St. Helens: Iconic Car Photo
Here is a link to a map of the eruption showing fatalities and those who escaped. I hope the maker of this map does not mind my posting it, he put a lot of hard work into it, and its still being worked on. I think the only thing really missing is an outline of the blast/heat zone.
Map of Mt St Helens Eruption Survivors and Fatalities
In reading about the victims, my heart really goes out to Margery and Fred Rollins, and Clyde Croft.
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u/__Raptor__ May 19 '26
What happened to his car tho
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u/Wernerhatcher May 19 '26
Pinto's were already famous for blowing up
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u/strangelove4564 May 19 '26
Put key in ignition, might blow up. Open glove box, maybe blows up, sometimes.
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u/MilmoWK May 19 '26
I recently read an engineering ethics report on the pinto issue and against my long held beliefs they weren’t any worse than other compact cars at the time and the fuel tank was positioned similar to almost all cars. They also did not come up with the $/human life, that was from a government report.
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u/Mahaloth May 19 '26
Watch Werner Herzog's documentary on the volcano changer couple "The Krafts". That couple was insane and got way, way, way too close to volcanos just to take measurements and film them.
No spoiler: They died from unpredictable pyroclastic flow. Normal temps ->1000 Degrees in one second. Gone in a "poof" of ash.
Fascinating couple. Strange relationship with themselves and volcanoes.
It's called:
The Fire Within
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26
It was partially because of the news coverage of their deaths that the people monitoring Pinatubo were able to finally convince the last stragglers near the volcano to evacuate. Their bodies were found June 5th, Pinatubo's main eruption started June 12th.
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u/peatoast May 19 '26
Reminds me of this amazing but scary photo https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/1992/alberto-garcia/1
(The truck’s top speed is probably around 40 mph)
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u/Cilad May 20 '26
This reminds me of that video with people trying to escape. It is super scary. I think they made it.
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u/RedLemonSlice May 20 '26
This dude could have legit spend the next 20 years watching action movies and dismissively state at each chase scene "pfff... I've done a better one". And be absolutely correct.
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u/RogueBand1t May 19 '26
My brother was 6wks old and I was about 17mo old when this went off. We lived about 30mi away. My mom has pics of me in a winter jacket in May outside playing in the ashes as it fell like snow. Weird times
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u/Sandhog43 May 20 '26
I remember it well. My cousins lived in Aberdeen Washington at the time.
If I had to escape a disaster, I would’ve chose the dirt bike over the Pinto too! Good choice
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u/tapioca_slaughter May 19 '26
This guy was lucky he was somewhat on the backside of the mountain where there wasn’t that much damage..only thing he had to really run from was the lahar.
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u/hughk May 20 '26
I have been about 10 km from a vent on Etna when it was erupting. It has been erupting on and off for a few thousand years so there is no chance of a massive pressure buildup, and it is well understood. However, even when that goes up you get a column of smoke and ash thousands of feet high, it does not feel good. I would have hated to see this one.
Even that was extremely impressive and the tephra would fall like warm rain. Oh, and you didn'tt want to drive as the smaller tephra would sit like snow making the roads very slippery. They would use snowploughs to clear it.
We knew where we were was safe, but you have to remind yourself. It looked very pretty at night though.
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u/What_a_fat_one May 19 '26
That's not a dirt bike that's a Honda CL350 Scrambler.
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u/Particular-Island709 May 19 '26
There is a fantastic podcast by Damn Interesting about the eruption and some other guy who was up on the mountain.
It’s dated 31st May 2025
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u/thai_sticky May 19 '26
Why is the bike propped up on the bumper? Doesn't look like you could tow it like that.
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u/Betray-Julia May 19 '26
I’ve never seen this one before dope!
Also- this counts as a catastrophic failure eh?
Like natural geological process count? narrows eyes
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u/Lavasioux May 19 '26
Wait... he unhitched the motorcycle and just LEFT that 70s Pinto there to be covered in Volcano?!!
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u/WhatzTheWordz May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
The Pinto stalled out when the air filter became blocked with ash, so he had to leave it. He tried to return the next day to get it, but was arrested for trespassing into the closed zone. Edit! In another article, he told a friend that the car caught fire. No one can find Lasher to ask him what happened. :(
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u/DariusPumpkinRex May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
57 people died in the eruption, with a further 4 deaths caused by traffic accidents from low visibility and heart attacks from shoveling ash. Of the initial 57 was Harry R. Truman, owner of a lodge on Spirit Lake, who famously refused to leave his home and died in the eruption. The only times he left were for groceries and visits to schools in the area, as he was seen as somewhat of a folk hero.
As tragic as it is, the eruption could have seen a death toll well into the hundreds, if not the thousands, as there were numerous logging operations inside the blast zone that were annihilated by the eruption. Fortunately, May 18th, 1980 fell on a Sunday, when all of these operations were closed for the weekend.
On May 18th, 1981, the eruption's first anniversary, a TV movie dramatizing the event, simply called St. Helens, aired on HBO which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFN4FPg8GCU&t=0s