As the 40 year anniversary of Mount St. Helens comes around, several news outlets are drawing similarities between the difficulty in establishing distancing and other safety parameters with the current state of lockdown protests in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although Americans had largely forgotten about the looming dangers that volcanos posed in their own backyards, the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 made “volcanic hazards a continental American issue”, Western Washington University geophysicist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach told The New York Times in an article covering the famous natural disaster. “As the volcano’s activity ramped up in March, scientists had to continually persuade the authorities to restrict access to all but law enforcement, volcano monitoring teams and other essential staff. Some groups protested, in an echo of events now occurring during the coronavirus pandemic, pointing to the impact the no-go zones were having on the local economy,” wrote Robin George Andrews in The New York Times.
The volcano, which had remained dormant for 123 years, caught many locals by surprise, despite gradual warnings and earthquakes. An article in The Spokesman-Review by Spokane historian Jim Kershner talks about the gradual shift in tone of media covering the news, and the difficulty in keeping climbers off the volcano. “This was clearly dangerous – and not just in retrospect. The next day [The Associated Press] noted that people entering the area were violating federal law and could be prosecuted,” wrote Kershner.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/science/mt-st-helens-eruption.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/may/17/123-years-ago-a-look-back-at-a-natural-disaster-in/
