Geologist to talk about eyewitness accounts of the eruption of Mount St Helens

Wenatchee Valley Erratics Chapter of the Ice Age Floods Institute will meet at 7p.m., Tuesday, April 9, at the Wenatchee Valley Museum, 127 South Mission, Wenatchee.

Richard Waitt, Research Geologist with USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, will talk about his book, In the Path of Destruction—Eyewitness Chronicles of Mount St. Helens. The book portrays Mount St. Helens’ May 18, 1980 eruption through first-person stories of people caught in, racing from, or witnessing the blast. Included are tales of the spring-1980 pre-eruption crisis period and of the explosion itself. And then the complicated aftermath of the eruption’s effects on landscape, structures, people, and wildlife.

A meticulous scientist with extensive knowledge of Mount St Helens, Waitt scoured legal documents, personal diaries, and geologists’ field notes to assemble this detailed and accurate chronicle of events. Though only partly a science book, science does lie within the hundreds of narratives he collected.

The program is free & open to the public.

For overviews of the Ice Age Floods and more information on the Ice Age Floods Institute, please see our website: http://www.iafi.org; http://www.hugefloods.com; and quadricopter videos of Ice Age features, http://www.brucebjornstad.com.