Everything youve seen today will repair the unit 1 a. M. Eastern. Thats 10 p. M. Out here on the west coast. Booktv now continues. [inaudible conversations] thank you so much for coming out on this really beautiful day. Apparently if you can manage it go have your allergies takeover. Thank you so much for coming. Before we get started just a few housekeeping notes that if you take the time to silence you cell phones. You dont have to turn your phone off. Want to have it out you can follow kramerbooks sfr emailed newsletter if you havent already. We have a beautiful website and would love for you to visit. On the website you can signup for email newsletter and see all the great events we have got going on like tonight with steve olson with tonight. Is going to talk about his connection to kramerbooks. Im so excited for them to do that. In his book he interweaves the history and Science Behind the eruption of Mount Saint Helens with the accounts of what happened to those people who lived it and those who died. As i said steve has some particular connections to kramerbooks ever so glad he can be with us here tonight. One of the Great Stories as a constructor, i am sarah by the way. I dont know if i introduce myself. One of the Great Stories assistant director is bringing authors to our local, we have wonderful local connections and you can see that in a wonderful crowd tonight. So please join me in welcoming steve olson to kramerbooks. [applause] ive never given a talk at kramerbooks before, but, and im really come i cannot begin to tell you how delighted i am to finally be doing this. When my wife and i were young newlyweds in the early 1980s, kramerbooks was what became for our date night. We get it is to reference together right over there who are now married and live in oregon, not too terribly far away from where we live in seattle. This bookstore has a lot of great memories for me. Memories is one going to start tonight because the eruption of Mount Saint Helens which was in that era on a sunday morning, may 18, 1980, 1 of those events that were so dramatic that for people who have a connection to the northwest, we tend to remember where we were when we heard the news. Like when i was writing am working on this book, it was a sunday morning. I was coming back from church and heard on the car radio that the mountain had erupted. Or people would say, yeah, theres an indication of where we were. Or they said i was barbecue in my backyard. I know where i was. I grew up in Washington State, but in may of 1980 i was living in washington, d. C. And were about to get married, three weeks away, so the anniversary of the russian is a Good Opportunity to remember my anniversary is coming up. We got married in rhode island and my grandmother who still lives in the small town where i lived, where i grew up, brought back a big jar of ash to the wedding because she knew everyone would be interested in seeing it. Ive always figured that it was a good thing that i was on the east coast because i was exactly the kind of kid who is interested in science and interested in geology and geological tactical. One of those kids who said when the volcano started shaking in the late went of 1980 i wouldve said i need to go see that. I wouldve grabbed a friend and we wouldve jumped in a car and headed down i five, turned off on the spirit lake highway and seven up Mount Saint Helens to see the small cups of aashto come out of the volcano when it first awakened. And if id done that on may 15 and my friend and i had camped on the volcano i would not be here talking to you today. So 57 people died from the eruption that sunday morning. The majority were asphyxiated by ash, but some people were pulled off ridge tops or swept away in the mudflow. A couple people were crushed by a tree that fell on the. Some people were burned by the hot gases. Only three of those 57 were in areas that had been designated as dangerous, at two of them had permission to be there. In fact, the only person whos s breaking the law was the one victim that we didnt remember best from the volcano, remember cantankerous 83 year old harry are true but refused to leave his lodge just four miles away from the summit down by spirit lake. So in the end those 57 were just too close to an extremely ancient volcano. Why were they so close . Were the danger zones to small . Was eruption that much bigger than geologists had expected . And what can wome we learn frome tragedies 57 deaths in living in a world of geological hazards with those with questions to really inspired me to write this book when i moved back to seattle about six years ago. What i discovered is amazingly rich and interconnected story, a story about politics and money and science but its also a story about logic. Its a story about the establishment of the National Forests and its a story about the transcontinental railroad. Its a star as big as the clinic itself and it all came together on the one day at this one place in may of 1980. The story began in rock island, illinois, which is a town on the Mississippi River about 150 miles west of chicago. Its so hot in here because i think you have a napkin for me . I think im going to sit down. It figures id come back to washington, d. C. On the one hot day in march. This town of rock island is what would your german immigrant named frederic moved in 1856. He took a job at a lumber yard tending that would be at previous jobs in a brewery and on a railroad. So he was intelligent and friendly and ambitious, and he rose quickly through the ranks of this lumberyard. He later wrote, i never counted the hours were knocked off until i finished what i had in hand. So within a few years he and his brotherinlaw thank you very much i will pass them around once i am done with them. [laughter] within a few years he and his brotherinlaw had bought the lumberyard in rock island and had begun to expand it. So at first that bot logs that were wrapped down the Mississippi River from the force of wisconsin and minnesota and put those through their sawmills. But he knew the real moy im doing this wrong. We would get back to him. A preview. He knew the real money lay in by land and chopping down the trees on the olympic he began to buy beautiful white pine, birch and ipod and the Chippewa River in wisconsin, and with the money he made for chopping down the trees he bought more land in wisconsin and in minnesota. Douches and currently good businessman and he was a good one for lumbermen. Do with a man in america knows so much about lines as he does. In 1891 he moved his family including his seven children at this point from rock island to st. Paul, minnesota, so he would be near the center of this log operation was put up the mississippi as wisconsin became more cut over at the center of the locking moved north. He bought a house next door to james j. Hill and with another remarkable businessman and visionary, who was just about to complete the Great Northern railway from st. Paul to seattle. Both of the houses are still there but if you ever go to st. Paul and a chance to see it, its an amazing monument. Its a wonderful place to visit. So the two became quickly good friends. They spend often eating at each others house but the only problem was that warehouse or have a tendency to fall asleep early. The families would often go by the living rooms and hill would be engaged in some monologue and warehouse would be an easy chair. In 1899 bill faced a major problem. He needed money to pay off a bond issue for the railroad but at that point yet way more land than he had money. By the time he had come to control not only a Great Northern road but also the Northern Pacific railway which ran from duluth, minnesota, today. And take control of the North Pacific hill came to control the elements of land grants of the North Pacific. This was an immense amount of property that the government gave to the railroads as an inducement to build rail lines. Both the transcontinental and in kosovo part of the country. The North Pacific received about 40 million acres of western land. An area greater than the size of florida. The Northern Pacific received part of its land grants for the line it build from essentially from portland, oregon, today, washington between 18701873. Thats the rail line that roughly parallels i5 today. The land grant expand about 40 miles on either side of the railroads. Mount saint helens is about 35 miles east of wifi. Thats why when the mountain erupted in 1980, the top of the volcano was still owned by the railroad. 1000, just a few days into the new century, they announced one of the largest and land purchases in u. S. History. For 6 an acre, they bought almost 1 million acres of timber land in southwestern Washington State. With the purchase along with other purchases to build in the area of the land grants, they bought almost all of the land between what is today i5 and Mount Saint Helens. By the way, this is one of the greatest investment that anyone has ever made anywhere after correcting for inflation a calculated that they made about 250 for every 1 dollar invested. Thats a much of the value of the 10 would they bought. Fast forward to 1980. On march 20 of that year, seismic detectors picked up a 4. 2 earthquake. In the Pacific Northwest we get plenty of earthquakes but we usually just get one or two and then things quiet down at the didnt happen in this case. After the earthquake or more and more earthquakes until the were so many they just ran together on the seismic detector. You couldnt tell them apart anymore. Volcanologists want to make sure magnet was on the boat but basically nothing was happening above ground. But then about a week after the initial earthquake a small crater opened up on the top of Mount Saint Helens. This was the first sig sight oft crater and these little clumps of ash began to originate. So Mount Saint Helens was less active in 1857 it had been inactive for 120 years and in march of 1980 it came back to life. The renewed activity about sales which is a National Treasure people can do Washington State not only from the United States bar from all over the world to see the ultimate. The last eruption of a volcano in the contiguous United States have been in northern california, in 1917. Very few people saw the spirit was in a part of the country that was hard to get too. That was not the case with Mount Saint Helens. There were hundreds and thousands of people. One day there were seven aircraft all struggling the mountain. They had to bring air Traffic Control to make sure no one would each other. At First Federal and state officials sought to limit access to the volcano by setting up roadblocks on the major highways your but theres a problem. They came under pressure from people who owned properties or businesses but on the other side of the roadblock so these people would exert pressure on officials to move the roadblock and gradually these roadblocks got closer and closer to the mountain. But the bigger problem is that the main roads amount around Mount Saint Helens is just a tiny fraction of all the roads around the mountain. In 1980 theyve been logging the area complained when i5 and amount for decades. In that process the company had built thousands of miles of logging thats what it is would anyone want to close to the mountain could just drive the highway and turn off on one of these logging roads and climb up to one of these ridgelines edited clearcut with a clear view of the mountain set up your camp and stay there for as long as you want it. There was no problem doing that. So by the middle of april government officials realized they needed a better way of controlling access. They took a Forest Service map and begin drawing lines around the volcano. The first thing they did is they drew a line along the ridgeline to the north of the volcano and along the eastern edge. They figured if anything came out of the volcano and wasnt able to get over those ridgelines. They continued down to the south on the southern flank of the volcano but they had a problem on the west side between the west and northwest side. They did want to extend this line to the warehouse property. He wanted to cut those trees, close down his nose. Gigantic trees that were there. So what government officials did on the website about is they simply drew the line between weyerhaeuser property to the west and the land of the National Force to the east. And that anything called the red zone to everything inside that solid line is only Law Enforcement and scientists could go in that area near the problem was that this red zone, it came only three miles away from the summit of the volcano at its closest approach. In the officials do another line that generally followed roads, about 10 miles of roads and fort of the ridgelines about 10 miles away from the peak. You could go in this area which was called the blue so they get permission. But again on the west side of the mountain they decided not to do that because they did want to draw this sewn into weyerhaeuser property it would be too complicated for all that weyerhaeuser loggers to get to permission to go to get on those sites there was no zone. So at about the same time these lines were being drawn something very troubling was happening with the volcano. A bulge began to form on the northern and northwestern flank of the volcano. It seemed to be caused by magma it was cooling underneath the volcano and pushing out the site. This was having very dramatically, this bulge was growing by five feet per day. And volcanologists who are studying the volcano did know exactly what is going to happen. They thought this bold cant keep going forever. It will come cascading come about at point towards spirit lake. The general consensus of level technologists was that it would simply be an avalanche and nothing else would happen. The problem was he just have the right on the side of the volcano with the danger zones were that were closest to the volcanos peak. So that was essentially the situation on the evening of saturday may 17. It was the first clear weekend after a cloudy and rainy spring, and that evening about two dozen people were getting ready to spend the night in the area north of Mount Saint Helens. Harry truman who refused to leave his lodge was getting ready for bed on the edge of spirit lake. Again, about four miles away from mounting them. To employees named bob and beverly were in the cabin a couple of miles down the river from spirit lake they have permission to stay at the cabin. They said they were doing a photographic study of the mountain from their deck because they could see the mountain from their deck. Although many of the people who owned cabin site around him thought it was a bit of a ruse every they were doing was just so they could use their cabin. But they still got permission to be there on the weekends. The next closest person to the volcano was geologist dave johnson who is keeping watch on the volcano from that ridgeline about five miles north of the peak. He had never even been to this location until the day before the eruption. He was filling in for a college who had to go away that evening to talk with this graduate advisors in california about an education program. And dave johnson was quite worried about being this close to the volcano. He had barely escaped a volcano eruption a few years before in alaska. These that i will go to as long as someone can spell me the next day. On average about seven miles away from the volcano was a photographer from the columbia newspaper vancouver like to produce taken photographs of the National Geographic as part of a project theyve been doing a good thing a time lapse study of the mountain but that project was scheduled to conclude after that we can because some have been happening with the mountain. Nothing was happening. On the second ridge north of Mount Saint Helens there was a photographer with columbia newspaper named Reid Blackburn. I told you about him but the other one on the Northern Ridge was jerry martin who was a retired navy ham Radio Operator with a group called the radio amateur Civil Emergency service. Washington state at that i didnt have enough money to put monitors close to the mountain and warm communities downstream if anything happened with the volcano. A group of amateurs decided to set up this network to give an eye on the volcano the jerry martin was the one who is closest to volcano bu by the otr people stationed around the volcano. Suggests past the third ridge away from the mountain where john and christie, newlywed couple from washington, a small logging town i write about in the book, give account at long lake which is sort of an alpine search goes on north side of the ridge. John was a joker center for a warehouse or pashtun weyerhaeuser. Had been working a few miles away from the he was one of probably three or 400 loggers from weyerhaeuser who would have died if the vulcan had erupted on a weekday rather than on a weekend. His wife ran a forklift at the weyerhaeuser bill down the ballot about 25 miles away from the volcano. They had been married about seven months that may and do friends told me theyre trying to have children if they couldnt even see the fault in a from the campground. It was just out of sight over a ridge on the other side of the lake. Finally i write about thre