M- Mtn. St. Helens Eruption

On May 18, 1980 at 8:32 a.m., the earth rumbles underneath Mount St. Helens, a peak in Skamania County in southwestern Washington. Moments later an explosion blasts away a side of the mountain in a major volcanic eruption. The volcano causes the deaths of 57 people. The destruction is widespread but especially severe in Clark County as boiling gas and mud scour 200 square miles of forest and 30 miles of State Route 504. Some 1,000 miles of state highways and roads have to be closed, some for months, and highway repairs alone run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

 McNair-Huff, Rob, and Natalie McNair-Huff. Washington Disasters: True Stories of Tragedy and Survival. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot, 2006. Print.