Mt St Helens warnings ignored

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After 123 years of erupted on May 18 with an explosion that blew a cubic mile of debris off the mountain and another cubic mile of ash into the stratosphere.

50 megaton nuclear bomb.

Although warned for seven weeks before the eruption that danger was imminent people did not take this seriously and many entered the evacuated and restricted area around the volcano.

Now nearly 100 people are missing, and at least 40 are known to be dead.

In the aftermath of this catastrophe accusations of incompetence are being levelled at the state government both for not adequately preparing for the eruption and for mismanaging the rescue and relief operations.

Earthquakes

Mount St. Helens began to erupt steam and ash on March 27 after a week of local carthquakes.

This was the first volcanic eruption in the United States since Mt. Lassen erupted in California during the First World War.

Immediately before this erupton earthquakes of magnirude 4 or greater were occuring every hour and the ground around the volcano was Dark at mid-day in Yakima constantly trembling.

But worse was to come. The enormous explosion of May 18 released a shock wave and winds which knocked down trees miles away.

Later, the first of several pyroclastic flows (fiery avalanches of glowing volcanic materials and gas), surged down the stopes of the volcano. engulfing all in their path and flattening 50. square miles of the countryside.

The ash that has been erupted into the stratosphere may remain there for two or more years. Some has already fallen over the Eastern United States and the rest will be spread wherever the winds By our Science Correspondent disperse it.

But it does not pose any significant problem for the rest of the world.

Global temperatures may drop by a fraction of a degree because the ash in the stratosphere reflects the warming rays of the sun away from earth.

Very small quantities of ash may be noticed falling on the rest of the world. But, most noticeably, sunsets may improve because of the presence of the ash in the air.

Although this eruption was similar in size to that of Vesuvius which engulfed Pompeii in 79 AD it is small compared to the eruptions of Santorini, which destroyed the Minoan civilisation and gave rise to the legend of Atlantis, and Krakatoa, which devasted much of coastal Indonesia and sent an enormous tidal wave around the world in 1883.

There is every indication that the eruption will go on through the summer and the final toll of devastation will not be known for some time.

Not heeded Accusations of incompetence in the handling of the disaster began when Governor Dixie Lee Ray declared a statewide state of emergency in Washington, evacuated people living on the flanks of the volcano and restricted access to the evacuated areas to scientists.

However, the warnings of the geologists were not heeded. Mount St. Helens became a tourist attraction-with sightseers coming from all over the The state police were unable to stop curious visitors and residents angry at being forced to leave their homes from entering the restricted area to see what was happening.

The day before the major eruption 50 residents of the evacuated township of Toutle forced the Governor to let them into the area to inspect their damaged homes.

On the day of the eruption yet another group of Toutle residents were due to visit the danger zone.

After the eruption, rescue attempts were hampered: airborne rescuers could not communicate with those on the ground because their radios were tuned to different frequencies.

Because the official rescue teams seemed to be dragging their feet, frustrated friends and relatives of those missing breached the security cordon and searched the devastated area themselves-often digging in the cloying dust for hours searching pathetically for a trace of those they had lost.

85 miles south west of the volcano in Yakima, a town of 50,000 péople, feverish attempts are being made to brush off the roofs the grey ash from the Volcano which fell like snow on the town.

Several feet deep

If it rains heavily before the roofs are cleared, the ash will turn to a concrete-like substance and crush buildings.

The ash has drifted into heaps several feet deep in the streets and it fills the air with a choking cloud of grey dust. Even here the emergency services seem inadequate.

As highlighted by the events of Mount St. Helens it is not the prediction of geological hazards that presents the real problem, but what is done with the prediction.

If the events there are a guide to what will happen should a large earthquake strike San Francisco or Los Angeles then there is grave. cause for concern about the authorities' ability to cope..

the Fourth International itself was founded; and this parallel between international revolution and international socialist culture is of striking significance.

After the second imperialist world war, during which Breton took refuge in the. United States, surrealism lived on sporadically; but its main strength was clearly spent.

Some of the surrealistsAragon in particular-had defected in the 1930s to Stalinism; Breton himself was to live on, still a convinced Trotskyist and active artist until 1966.

Powerful The decline of surrealism goes hand in hand with the eclipse of proletarian revolution in the Cold War period; and it was not, of course, free from serious internal flaws.

Its demand for a 'poetry of the unconscious' was often naive; it thrived, artistically, in frenetic bursts of energy rather than as a planned strategy; and it contained more than its fair share of Romantic-anarchist elements.

On the other hand, surrealism represents one of the most powerful fusions of art and politics which the century has witnessed.

More than a century before its birth, the English revolutionary poet William Blake had written that the business of mankind is the arts, and all things in common. Breton and the surrealists were the great inheritors of this belief, united as they were in agreement with Leon Trotsky's watchword: "To conquer for all men the right not only to bread but to poetry'.

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Carter Truman ruge The reversal, at least redressing, of the military balance was surprisingly rapid.

In the testing of the first atomic bomb the USA had lead of 4 years over the USSR (1945-1949); in the explosion the first thermonuclear device (hydrogen bomb) the lead was cut to nine months (1952-53).

And then in the development of missiles (and space sattelites) the US lead wa. rapidly eliminated.

Peaceful coexistence' and "detente' between the rulers of escentlany antagonistic systems were of course marked by periods of sometimes quite sharp wo worsening in relations.

Suc temporary freezes' occurred over the 'invasion of Hungary 1956, over US

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slumber, the volcano Mt. St. Helens in Washington State

The force of this eruption was nearly equivalent to a