The Director's Story:
Filming in a Disaster Area
by Daniel Hissen
After Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, the story most
people heard was about violence and devastation. One of the
greatest natural disasters of our time, the eruption killed 57
people, sheared 1,300 feet off the summit of the mountain, and
turned a pristine forested landscape into a barren, lifeless
wasteland.
I saw it for myself in early 1982, when I visited the blast
zone while an exchange student in Portland, Oregon. It was
just a year and a half after the eruption, and I remember
being totally shocked by the stark moonscape. One had to think
of Hiroshima, but this was not human-made. How to understand
it?
Landscapes tell stories, if we know how to listen, and that's
what scientists have been doing at St. Helens ever
since—listening, watching, and learning. Right after the
disaster, they began going up to the volcano to seek other
stories. The eruption and all that it precipitated—the
massive debris avalanche, mud- and pyroclastic flows, and the
subsequent growth of a new lava dome, among other
impacts—created a real-time laboratory. Recognizing the
unique opportunity for study, the U.S. Congress safeguarded
this laboratory in 1982 when it passed the Mount St. Helens
National Volcanic Monument Act. The act placed over 100,000
acres under protection to allow "geologic forces and
ecological succession to continue substantially unimpeded."
A story of hope
During the next two decades, as I worked as a documentary
filmmaker in Europe, I did not think much about St. Helens.
But when I returned to the mountain in 2006, nearly a quarter
century after my first visit, I could not believe how the
sight of the place had changed. It was hard to comprehend that
all that silent, dead landscape had become green, had come
alive. Charlie Crisafulli, a U.S. Forest Service ecologist
based at the monument's headquarters in Amboy, Washington, was
showing me around the blast zone, and I was speechless because
of the sheer beauty of this unique landscape.
I felt naturally drawn to this story of hope, and that feeling
only increased when I met Charlie. Even after 30 years of
continuous research in the blast zone, he appeared utterly
dedicated to and in love with his "Garden of Eden." Charlie
was the perfect protagonist for our film. He came shortly
after the 1980 eruption early in his career, a 22-year-old,
half-trained ecologist, full of ambition and eager to learn
all that the volcano offered. Charlie is the only scientist
who has stayed continuously with the site over the past three
decades, sacrificing other opportunities to witness that
miracle of nature's return unfolding. (Hear an
audio slide show
with Crisafulli.)
In 1980 it seemed as though St. Helens might remain a
wasteland forever. Then one day everything changed.
From the start, "Mt. St. Helens: Back From the Dead" was to be
a story of the resilience of nature, set against the backdrop
of the largest natural laboratory in the world. I joined
forces with ORF-UNIVERSUM and Interspot Productions, both
leading specialists in high-quality documentary filmmaking
based in Vienna, Austria, and they got codirector Heinz Leger
on board as wildlife specialist. Filming began two years after
my first revisit to St. Helens. By then I had included a
second main character in the film, geologist Jon Major from
the U.S. Geological Survey in Vancouver, Washington. With him
we would explore the volcano itself and ask the obvious
question: Will St. Helens blow again?
In the blast zone
We had a chance to ask this question as soon as we arrived.
Wanting to stay as close as possible to the volcano while
producing the film, we set up camp within the 1980 blast zone.
From there we had a full view of St. Helens, its crater and
flanks etched by deep shadows in the long evening light. The
mountain seemed vibrant, imposing, and very close. As we
settled into our camp chairs that first day, a plume of vapor
suddenly erupted from the crater. Were we in danger?
St. Helens is covered with sensing devices, and the seismic
forecast at the time called for continuous silence. But we
were well aware that in the 2004 eruption, when magma again
reached the surface, the mountain had gone from quiescence to
eruption within 24 hours. So we were on our guard, even as we
felt calmed by the purple lupine blanketing the pumiceous
ground around the camp and the stunning view of Mount Adams to
the south.
Soon after arrival, the crew members, with director of
photography Josef Neuper and camera assistant Martin Stoni,
wandered off to find places level enough to pitch their tents
among the young Douglas fir trees. We had brought all our own
camping gear, including generators, a kitchen tent with
cooking gear, and an equipment tent. Our second
crew—codirector Heinz Leger, underwater cameraman Erich
Pr�ll, and camera assistant Judith Wirth—operated out of
a small camp down at Spirit Lake.
An icon of the blast zone, Spirit Lake drew my especial
attention because one-third of its surface is still covered by
a silvery, constantly moving log mat, consisting of burnt logs
from the pre-eruption old-growth forest. The blast
extinguished all life within Spirit Lake, but today large
rainbow trout swim in this once again clearwater lake. A
helicopter had to sling-load all the gear of our underwater
crew down to the lake, including the bulky, 300-pound
underwater housing for our second HD-Cam camera. We looked
forward to two summers with five weeks of filming each.
Life finds a way
On our first filming trip, it quickly became clear that what
was once a place for climbers and adventurers had become a
place for thinkers and dreamers, a source of ideas. The magic
of the landscape is compelling. Charlie helped us understand
how nature regenerated there, to see it, as he saw it, as a
fight for survival. In 1980 it seemed as though St. Helens
might remain a wasteland forever. Then one day everything
changed: a single lupine appeared amidst hundreds of acres of
pumice. It was the breakthrough Charlie had been waiting for.
The return of life that began with this lupine continued with
a humble rodent, the pocket gopher. In the aftermath, the
pocket gophers that had survived the blast in their burrows
tunneled through the new ash like little animate plows. In
doing so they mixed the ash with the organically rich
underlying soil, bringing up spores of fungi that make it
easier for plants to absorb nutrients. Wherever the gophers
went they left fertilized and cultivated spots where
wind-borne seeds could drift in and take root. Plant seeds
landed on these mounds and transformed them into oases of
fireweed, lupine, and thimbleberry.
In the crater
During our second filming trip we finally received permission
to fly into the crater and touch down at different locations.
Until recently, constant dome growth had made it impossible to
film in the crater, but the volcano had fallen silent. Jon,
our geologist, led the operation, and the views were
breathtaking. Probably the most difficult thing at St. Helens
is to understand the scale of everything. Not before you see a
helicopter fly in front of the dome within the crater do you
realize just how vast this volcanic landscape is.
St. Helens will surely erupt again. Charlie and Jon would love
nothing more.
Constant rockfall makes the inside of the crater a hazardous
place, and, of course, we were always on guard for a possible
resurgence of volcanic activity. But we were reassured by the
high-tech "spiders" that USGS geologists had recently placed
inside and around the crater. (The main instrument box of each
sits atop a three-legged tripod, hence the name.) Each spider
pod contains a seismometer to detect earthquakes, a GPS
receiver to pinpoint the exact location and measure subtle
ground deformation, an infrared sounder to sense volcanic
explosions, and a lightning detector to search for ash cloud
formation. Volcanologists can use such networks to respond
rapidly to an impending eruption.
Geologically, St. Helens rebuilds itself at a fast pace, as
another instrument the USGS placed on the mountain—a
time-lapse camera—has revealed. From the post-eruption
crater floor to its highest point, the 2004-2008 dome equals
the height of New York's Empire State Building. A glacier more
than 100 feet thick has also formed like a donut around the
dome, the only growing glacier at such low altitude in North
America. Because of the constant dusty rockfall, the glacier's
ice shines black in the midday sun.
Watching and waiting
Nature tells us that volcanic eruptions are an integral part
of Earth's ecosystems, and St. Helens will surely erupt again.
Charlie and Jon would love nothing more. Charlie would welcome
the opportunity to watch, for a second time, how the volcano's
wildlife responds to such a natural disaster. Jon, for his
part, would like to know if, with all the modern monitoring
equipment at his disposal, he would be able to predict another
large eruption well in advance, possibly saving lives. No one
wants to be caught off guard again like we were in 1980.
