We live in the Northwest with the beauty surrounding us, the
agriculture, forests not to mention the springtime when the area is full of the
beautiful blooming trees and flowers. My personal favorite time of year here;
the green even on a rainy or snowy day is still prevalent. I wonder how many of us take all of this
for granted. We are also in the area of multiple volcanos, I think if we
stopped to think about what this could entail we could be a little frightened
of all this beauty, and how fast it could all be gone. However, where would we
go, we have flash floods in the desert, mudslides on the side of mountains or
hills, tornadoes in the plain states, levees break in the south, etc. I think
we get the idea. There is natural disaster all around us.
Just how many volcanoes are there in the Northwest? The Cascade
Volcanoes, also known as the Cascade Volcanic Arc stretches from British
Columbia to Northern California a span of over 700 miles. There are major
cities along the way and encompass a population of more than 10 million people.
The Cascade Arc includes nearly twenty major volcanoes and over the last 37 million
years has been erupting a chain of volcanoes, which has created our the
mountain ranges in the area.
These volcanoes have proven that they can erupt, as on May 18,
1980, when Mt. Saint Helen blew up the entire north face of the mountain,
rising 60 thousand feet into the air causing mudslides as far away as the
Columbia River, nearly fifty miles to the Southwest. The eruption was also
responsible for depositing ash over eleven U.S. states.
I lived in Salt Lake City, UT at the time but my parents were
staying at the John Day Dam at the time. My Aunt, Uncle, Mom and Dad all had
their trailers parked in the parking lot at the damn they were heading for my
other Aunt and Uncles farm in Othello, WA. I did see ash fall from the sky in Salt Lake but my relatives
were right in the thick of it. The ash would clog the air filters in the cars
and you would have to stop to clean them out before you could travel a few more
miles. When my parents returned home, they related the story of what they
experienced. They finally made it to Othello, WA; a little farming community located
about 185 miles from Mount Saint Helen. In Othello, the air quality was so bad
no one was to go outside without a mask. Breathing the ash caused multiple
respiratory incidents flooding the tiny emergency room of the local hospital.
The cleanup took years and caused devastation to this farming
community. They were not alone, in Pullman, Washington the ash was so deep they
used snow shovels to try to clean up the mess. Fifty-seven people were killed
or missing according to Live Science.
The
eruption, which removed the upper 1,300 feet of the summit, left a
horseshoe-shaped crater and a barren WASTELAND. Today the land is healing,
having recovered its natural beauty, but the landscape has been permanently
altered. (Bagley, 2013, para. 1)
There have been minor eruptions over
the past century and will probably be more in the next century or possibly
another major eruption. There is much marketing in the media today to make sure
we have emergency rations and supplies. If this ever happens, we need an
emergency plan; the rule of thumb according to the Emergency Preparedness
Center, Inc. is we need at least seventy-two hours of food for each member of
the household, including pets. You should also store at least one half gallon
of water per day for each person in your family.
How do we keep safe from natural
disasters? We cannot always do this but we can be prepared in the event of a
natural disaster by always thinking about safety wherever you go in the
Northwest whether it is hiking, skiing or hunting in our beautiful area.
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