Nobody has spent more time studying nature's response to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens than Charlie Crisafulli.
The little "Entering the blast zone" sign on the edge of the highway tells the Mount St. Helens revival story.
In March, just as tourism-oriented businesses around Mount St. Helens started ramping up for 20th anniversary crowds, the Forest Service dropped a bombshell: It didn't have enough money to open one of the three big visitors centers at the National Volcanic Monument.
In 1980, the science of predicting when volcanoes might erupt was a seat-of-the-pants kind of thing.
Life returned to Mount St. Helens even before the search for the dead had ended.
Back in the spring of 1980, few people believed Mount St. Helens really would erupt.
Twenty years ago, Harold Kolb was a Washington National Guard helicopter pilot training in Yakima when what he thought were black storm clouds rolled over the Cascade Mountains.
Volcano experts are trying to figure out what other tricks Mount St. Helens might show off after Friday's eruption, the first in 18 years at the region's most active volcano.
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