The Victims of the Eruption

In May of 2000, a memorial plaque was placed in a grove of trees at the Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor's Center in memory of the victims of the eruption.   Fifty-seven names are etched into the plaque.  Fifty-seven lives needlessly lost.  They were loggers, campers, reporters and scientists.  In all, there were 36 victims brought out of the devastated area.  But after all of the searching, rescues and recoveries, there were still many people who were never found. By the third week following the blast, 25 people were confirmed dead but 47 were still on the missing list.  Luckily, 15 of the missing were later found alive. Only four of the victims were known to be inside the restricted areas set up by federal and local governments.  David Johnston was on duty for the USGS stationed at Coldwater II only 5 miles from the summit.  There was the stubborn Harry Truman who refused to leave his lodge at Spirit Lake and was eventually given special permission to stay.  And amateur vulcanologists Bob Kaseweter and Beverly Wetherald who had permission to take readings near Spirit Lake at their own risk.   The other victims, some as far as 13 miles from the mountain, were in areas considered safe.  The thick clouds of ash and raging mudflows caught many people off guard.

But even to this day, controversy bubbles just beneath the surface.  It is well known that local government was pressured by logging companies to make the restricted areas smaller than recommended by the USGS.  Millions of dollars in revenue were going to be lost if loggers could not get in to retrieve lumber.   Even locals living near the mountain balked at the limited access they had to their property.  In the weeks before the eruption on May 18th, the mountain had become unusually quiet and many people believed the danger had past.  They were tired of the disruption to their lives and wanted the blockades removed.  In hindsight, many more people would have survived had the federal and local government heeded the warnings of David Johnston and the other USGS officials and made the restricted zones larger.   For some, luck was on their side.  Had the mountain erupted only a few hours later, the forests surrounding the area would have been filled with the sounds of chainsaws run by the thousands of Weyerhauser employees usually at work near the mountain on weekends.

Unfortunately, we may never know if there were other victims who chose the wrong day to stray too close to the mountain and were never counted as victims.   At least one survivor who had been camped just outside the restricted area told rescuers that he had seen people on the ridge below, inside the restricted area, just before the eruption.  Who were these people?  Did anyone even know they were there?  In the book Mount St Helens: The Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano by Rob Carson, Skamania County Sheriff William Closner states, "People went over, under, through, and around every time we tried to restrict access to what we believed were dangerous areas. There were even maps sold showing how to get around our blockades on the mountain."  Because of the severity of the devastation near the mountain it may never be known if 57 is the final tally.

Below is a list of the known victims of the eruption.  I would be interested in adding some personal information for each victim if anyone can be helpful with this task.

Victims Who Were Recovered

Victims Never Recovered

Pages designed May 1998 by Valerie A. Smith. Please send all questions, comments and suggestions to valerie@olywa.net
Thank you to the USGS and other featured photographers. Without the photos, these pages would not be possible.
This page last updated June 06, 2006.