Authors: Patrick Robinson
Volcano experts from all over the area were being rounded up, electronically, and interviewed. All of them admitted to absolute bewilderment, and by 0900, radio and television newsrooms were desperate for information. The State Police had placed a ban on media helicopters, and it was impossible to get near the mountain.
The “experts” who were permanently monitoring the volcano were impossible to find, and the university study groups, collecting data in the foothills below the crater, were dead. Most of the observation posts to the north of the mountain were devastated, the buildings on the high ridges reduced to burned-out hulks, the low ones swept away by the incinerating magma.
Trees smashed by the blast leaned at ridiculous angles against the others that had withstood the explosion. These now formed enclosed, towering pyramids of volatile, combustible dry pine branches lit from within, as the fire raced across the dead needles on the forest floor.
From above, they looked like scattered furnaces, burning to red-hot flash points and instantly setting fire to anything made of wood and resin within spitting distance.
By lunchtime, the President had declared southwest Washington State a disaster zone and Federal help was on its way. The trouble with volcanoes, however, is that there are no half-measures, no wounded, no traumatized persons—and no witnesses. The fury of this type of assault on the planet is too formidable.
If you’re near enough to cast light on the actual event from a close-up position, your chances of survival are close to zero. It was no different at the base of Mount St. Helens on that Sunday morning…except for one big four-wheel-drive-vehicle that had
been parked all night on the northwest shore of Spirit Lake. This contained a selection of sporting rifles, fishing rods, and four sportsmen, three of them local—one from Virginia.
The leader of the little expedition was Tony Tilton, a former attorney from Worcester, Massachusetts, currently President of the Seattle National Bank. Accompanying him was the legendary East Coast dealer of marine art Alan Granby, who had moved west with his wife, Janice, after a money-grabbing private corporation threatened to build a massive wind farm opposite their backyard on the shores of Nantucket Sound.
The third member of the party was another East Coast native, the eminent broadcaster and political observer Don McKeag, who had finally abandoned his show on a local Cape Cod radio station for a huge network contract that required him to live and work out of Seattle—the “Voice of the Northwest.”
The fourth serious sportsman in that accomplished little group was the big-game fisherman, duck hunter, and car racer Jim Mills from Middleburg, Virginia. They were on a weeklong hunting, shooting, and fishing trip, and they’d been camped by the lake all night, ready for an assault on the superb trout that made Spirit Lake their home.
There was one prime difference between these four and the rest of the sportsmen scattered around the lake in the warm summer months. Tony Tilton and his wife, Martha, had been cruising in the eastern Caribbean when the Montserrat volcano exploded in 1997, burying two towns, wrecking the entire south side of the island, and showering everything within 40 miles with thick, choking volcanic ash. Tony Tilton had stood on the foredeck of his chartered yacht and watched the towering inferno belch fire from the Soufriere Hills.
Etched in Tony’s memory was the speed with which the mountain unleashed its wrath upon the island. He had seen the blast, watched the roaring plume of burning ash and smoke burst upwards, hundreds of feet into the sky. Almost simultaneously, he had seen the great glowing evil of the magma begin its fatal roll
down three sides of the mountain. A trained attorney, he had the lawyer’s grasp of facts, and the banker’s eye for the minutiae. In Tony’s opinion you had approximately fourteen minutes to get the hell away from that mountain or perish.
And now, twelve years later, on that early Sunday morning on the shores of Spirit Lake, Tony heard a strange and sudden wind, a
wh-o-o-o-o-sssh
through the dense foggy air above the water. Instinctively he had glanced up but seen nothing.
Less than twelve seconds later, he heard a dull, muffled roar from way up on the mountain, but again he could see nothing up the slopes through the fog. He heard the wind again, and another shuddering distant thump from the summit of the mountain. It was louder this time, but perhaps only because Tony was already on high alert.
That did it for the Seattle Bank President. He turned to Don McKeag and said sharply, “Get in the wagon, Donnie. And don’t speak. Just get in.” Then he yelled towards the tent
“ALAN, JIMMY…. GET UP AND GET IN THE WAGON…RIGHT NOW…WE’RE IN BIG TROUBLE.”
Alan Granby, a big man, but as light on his feet as the late, great Jackie Gleason, understood immediately. He and Jimmy had slept fully dressed and they both came scrambling out of their tents, alerted by the obvious tension in Tony Tilton’s voice.
The engine of the wagon was already running, and they both jumped into the rear seats. Tony hit the gas pedal and they burned rubber on the warm shores of the lake, heading west, through the short forest trail that led to Route 504. The trail was straight and relatively smooth and the wagon was moving at almost 70 mph when they heard the third explosion right behind them, followed quickly by another.
“What in the name of hell was that?” asked Don McKeag.
“Nothing much,” said Tony. “Except I think Mount St. Helens just erupted.” By now they were on the country road, which would lead north up to the town of Glenoma and the much faster Route 25. And all around them were strange glowing lights falling into the trees like a meteor shower.
But the brightness had gone out of the day. Alan Granby glanced at the sky. “If I had to guess,” he said, “I’d say this was the start of a partial eclipse of the sun.”
At that moment, they felt an earth-shuddering rumble beneath the wheels of the wagon, and a howling wind screamed through the forest, like a hurricane. Tony hammered the wagon up deserted Route 12, heading north and conscious of the burning debris beginning to litter the road.
“Let’s hope I don’t get into reverse by mistake,” he muttered. “I got a feeling anyone left back there might not make it.”
The miles whipped away beneath their wheels, and now the sky was darkening into a thick, high gunmetal-gray cloud above them. Yet through the rear window they could discern a terrible glow in the sky. In eleven minutes, they had put twelve miles between themselves and the lower slopes of Mount St. Helens. Up ahead it looked slightly brighter, and Don, ever the journalist, suggested they pull over after another couple of miles and take a look back at the mountain, and the fires, and the scorched earth they had somehow escaped.
“Any of you guys fancy a short hunting-fishing trip next year to Indonesia?” asked Tony. “You know…a nice little base camp on the slopes of Krakatoa…I’m getting to be a real pro at volcano escape…”
Three Hours Later.
“Good morning, everyone, this is Don McKeag, reporting firsthand from the front line of our statewide catastrophe. During the sudden and devastating eruption of Mount St. Helens, I was in a hunting camp right in the foothills of the volcano as it was about to detonate.
“I think I can say honestly, it is nothing short of a miracle that I am here talking to you this morning…because I was spared from certain death by the quick thinking of my friend
Tony Tilton who somehow drove us to safety…through the fires and the volcanic ash…out in front of the molten lava…away from the cataclysmic explosion.
“For my regular weekday morning program, you know I always take calls and discuss the politics of this great state…Today I’m changing the formula…I just want to sit here, catch my breath, and try to explain what it’s like, literally, to escape from the jaws of hell…. So far, we’re getting reports of perhaps a hundred of our fellow citizens who never made it…To their families I want to express my deepest, most profound sorrow and sympathy…I might very easily have been one of them….”
As Donnie spoke in measured, yet inevitably dramatic, tones, every fireman in southwest Washington State was engaged in fighting the fires along the periphery of the central blaze. It was pointless to even think about entering the interior zone below the north face of the mountain or about running a fleet of ambulances into the inferno. There would be no injured.
The only thing that could be done now was to try and stem the blazing forest, to stop it spreading outwards to wreak havoc and misery upon unsuspecting home owners. Soon they would have crop sprayers in the skies dumping hundreds of tons of water on the parts of the forests that remained intact. Others were out there, pumping and spraying great tracts of forest, trying to stop the searing heat from evaporating the water before the fires even arrived.
By mid-Sunday afternoon, the disaster was big national news. CNN had pictures, as did Fox News and most of the networks. By Sunday evening, all of the twenty-four-hour news channels were struggling with the story. They were without any fresh information, new facts, or revelatory opinions. Yes, Mount St. Helens had made a titanic eruption early on Sunday morning. Yes, there was a lot of fire and fury, ash, molten rock, and lava. And yes, anyone trapped in the immediate vicinity of the mountain was most certainly dead. And yes, there were God knows how many forest fires raging all around the northern territories beyond the volcano.
Eyewitnesses from close up: zero, except for Don McKeag and his three friends.
Volcanoes traditionally do anything they damn well please, ruling out the possibilities of indignant editorials proclaiming in time-honored cliché,
WHY THIS MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.
Or,
DID THEY DIE IN VAIN?
Or,
WAS THIS AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN?
Or even that cringe-making old favorite,
HEADS MUST ROLL!
Instead, the news and feature rooms turned, admittedly with a mixture of reluctance and relief, to the “experts,” many of whom had died on the mountain, but some who were ready to cast a light on an occurrence about which they had not the remotest clue.
Yes, there had been steam and even some gases leaking from the crater on the summit in recent weeks. Yes, there had been signs of fire, ashes, and black smoke bursting into the atmosphere. And no, it would not have been a tremendous surprise if Mount St. Helens had erupted in the next five years. The giant carbuncle was indeed a significant factor.
What baffled the professors was the sheer speed of the eruption, so sudden, so unexpected, so utterly without warning. This was a new concept for volcanologists all over the world. No angry early blasts, no torrents of high sparks and sinister rumbles, not even the sight of molten lava creeping out over the rim of the crater. Nothing. This was the Whispering Death of Mount St. Helens. Unseen. Unsuspected. Unannounced.
CNN rustled up a young volcanologist from the University of California in Santa Cruz. He had never even seen Mount St. Helens, and had not been born when it erupted in 1980. His father was not born when Lassen Peak, the only other comparable volcanic eruption in the U.S., let fly in 1914. But the recently qualified Simon Lyons from Orange County spoke with the unwavering authority of those sufficiently youthful still to have the answers to everything.
“Any halfway decent student of geohazardous situations must have known this volcano could have erupted at any time,” he
said. “That carbuncle was growing at a very fast rate, maybe a half-mile across in the last two years. That’s the sign we’re all looking for. That’s the sign of the encroaching magma, surging up from the core of the earth. You see a carbuncle being force-fed with lava from below, right there, you’re looking at a volcano fixing to blow.”
“Then you blame those study groups based on mountain, supposedly monitoring it for the benefit of us all…using Federal funds?”
“Yes, sir. I most certainly do. Incompetence. Ignorance of the value of the data. Ought to be anathema to a real scientist.”
Professor Charles Delmar, of the University of Colorado, was older, more experienced, and more circumspect. Fox News got ahold of him, and he was the first to admit he could throw little light on the eruption.
He said the photographs he had been shown suggested the Sunday morning blowout on the summit of the mountain had been aimed to the north, which suggested the carbuncle itself had given way to the pressure of the magma below. Professor Delmar found that “most unusual” simply because there were no other reported symptoms of eruptions from that precise location. There had been evidence of steam gouts and some smoke, but that was reportedly emanating from the mountain peak, not from cracks in the carbuncle, which would have been an indication of pressure underneath the dome of lava rock.
Therefore, Professor Delmar considered it “most odd” that it should suddenly have obliterated itself, and “even more odd” that it should have given way so comprehensively, so quickly, that the third biggest volcano eruption in the U.S.A. in a hundred years should have happened, literally, within moments.
The
Barracuda II
moved slowly south down the Pacific, following the 127th western line of longitude for another 100 miles. It was almost 0300 when the great submarine moved stealthily to the surface, ran up an ESM mast, and transmitted a one-word
message to their command headquarters, via the satellite, to faraway Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz.
Saladin
was the word. And the transmission was forwarded on by E-mail to a computer based on Via Dolorosa, in the Muslim section of Jerusalem, the very street down which Jesus is said to have carried his cross en route to Calvary.
Within moments, a stamped, sealed letter with airmail stamps already affixed was in the hands of a messenger, running swiftly through the old city to the central post office on Schlomzion Street.
It was addressed to
Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, U.S.A. PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.
General Rashood knew the Admiral no longer worked in the West Wing, but he was confident the U.S. Administration’s gigantic 50,000-letters-a-week mail room would find a way to forward the letter to the Admiral’s private home address.