All these photographs of the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 from The Atlantic are powerful.
How did the photographers manage to get these shots in the mist of such a major, catastrophic event? We don’t know but we can’t stop looking a them.
"On May 18, 1980, an earthquake struck below the north face of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, triggering the largest landslide in recorded history and a major volcanic eruption that scattered ash across a dozen states.
The sudden lateral blast—heard hundreds of miles away—removed 1,300 feet off the top of the volcano, sending shockwaves and pyroclastic flows across the surrounding landscape, flattening forests, melting snow and ice, and generating massive mudflows.
A total of 57 people lost their lives in the disaster.”