File:Mount St. Helens 05-18-1980.jpg
On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook Mount St. Helens. The bulge and surrounding area slid away in a gigantic rockslide and debris avalanche, releasing pressure, and triggering a major pumice and ash eruption of the volcano. Thirteen-hundred feet (400 meters) of the peak collapsed or blew outwards. As a result, 24 square miles (62 square kilometers) of valley was filled by a debris avalanche, 250 square miles (650 square kilometers) of recreation, timber, and private lands were damaged by a lateral blast, and an estimated 200 million cubic yards (150 million cubic meters) of material was deposited directly by lahars (volcanic mudflows) into the river channels. Fifty-seven people were killed or are still missing.
USGS Photograph taken on May 18, 1980, by Austin Post (see http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Images/may18_images.html).
This is a cropped, smaller version of the 2048 x 3072 pixel USGS source image.
Date
Taken on 18 May 1980
Source
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Imgs/Jpg/MSH/Images/MSH80_eruption_mount_st_helens_05-18-80.jpg
Author
Other versions
Austin Post
(1922–2012) |
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Description | American photographer, glaciologist and mountaineer | ||
Date of birth/death | 16 March 1922 | 12 November 2012 | |
Authority file |
Licensing
This image is in the public domain in the United States because it only contains materials that originally came from the United States Geological Survey, an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. For more information, see the official USGS copyright policy.
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