The Michigan Daily
Vol. XC, No. 44-S
Ann Arbor, Niichigan-
-Wednesday, July 23, 1980 Ten Cents Sixteen Pages plus Supplement
St. Helens
erupts after
six-week-
dormancy
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) - Mount
St. Helens broke a six-week silence with
four towering ash eruptions yesterday
after a series of increasingly frequent
earthquakes, the U.S. Geological Sur-
vey said.
A pyroclastic flow of superheated
gas, ash and rock also rolled down the
north slope of the mountain reaching to
Spirit Lake, the USGS said.
THERE WERE no immediate repor-
ts of injuries.
Residents of Cougar, about 15 miles
southwest of the volcano, were being
evacuated as a precautionary measure,
said the Cowlitz County sheriff's office.
A mushroomrshaped cloud of ash
towered to a height of 45,000 feet in the
first eruption at 5:14 p.m. PDT, the
National Weather Service reported.
THE NWS SAID the ash was heading
north-northeast toward many of the
eastern Washington areas blanketed by
AP Photo
A PLUME OF SUPERHEATED volcanic ash spews from Mount St. Helens
in this photograph taken June 15. The mountain roared after a six-week break
yesterday, emitting no less than four separate mushroom-shaped clouds of
dust and debris.
FLIGHT COMMANDEERED TO CUBA:
Delta jetliner skyjacked
ash during the mountain's first massive
eruption on May 18.
A second eruption came at about 6:25
p.m., with a darker cloud and larger
plume rising to above 50,000 feet, said
Carl Burgeson, spokesman for Gifford
Pinchot National Forest.
A third plume appeared shortly after
7 p.rp., authorities said, followed by a
fourth blast at about 7:20 p.m.
WITHIN AN hour of the first erup-
tion, observers ina U.S. Fborest Service
plane reported that a lava dome which
had been slowly growing in the crater
since the last eruption June 12 appeared
to have a hole blown through it.
"It looks like it blew its core,' said
Phil Cogan of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
A Forest Service spokesman said 120
firefighters near the mountain were
evacuated safely to the Mount Adams
Ranger Station in Trout Lake, about 55
miles east-southeast of the volcano in
southwestern- Washington. The crews
had been fighting fires started by the
May 18 eruption which had been
smouldering beneath a blanket of ash....
BURGESON SAID logging crews also
apparently were out of the danger area.
"As far as we have it, nobody is in the
red zone," the restricted area around
the volcano, he added..
Because the volcano had remained
quiet for several weeks, state officials
in recent days had moved to reduce the
red zone, loosening the restrictions on
public access to areas around the
mountain. -
INITIAL REPORTS indicated a light
ashfall in White Pass, 15 miles nor-
theast of the peak, within an hour after
the eruption started at 5:14p.m. PDT.
"It looks like the real thing," said
USGS geologist Tim Hait. "It's got a
real beauty to it."
Lt. George Engledow of the'
Washington State Patrol said troopers
were put on standby alert in Yakima,
Spokane and the Tri-Cities of Richland,
Kennewick and Pasco.
The National Weather Service issued
a precautionary flood watch for areas
within 10 miles of the volcano.
MIAMI (UPI)-4 Delta Air Lines jetliner en route from
Chicago to San Juan, Puerto Rico, with 147 persons aboard
was hijacked to Cuba last night by a man who said he was a
Puerto Rican with "personal problems."
After it was forced by foul weather to land at the airport in
remote Camaguey, 300 miles southeast of Havana, Delta
Flight 1135 returned safely last night to Miami, its last stop
before it was hijacked.
DELTA OFFICIALS SAID none of the 132 passengers left
aboard or the 14 crewmembers was harmed. While FBI
agents interviewed the passengers, workers refueled the
Lockheed 1011so it could continue to San Juan.
FBI agent Bill Nettles said the unidentified hijacker arose
from his seat in the first class section when the plane was 200'
miles over the water from Miami, produced a small handgun
and grabbed a stewardess.
Twisting her arm, Nettles said, he forced her to the door of
the cockpit, where she used the intercom to tell pilot L.
} Gildermaster that the man wanted to go to Havana.
NETTLES SAID THE gunman was never allowed into the
cockpit. He said he kept the gun in the stewardess' back
during the entire flight,
The gunman spoke only Spanish, Nettles said, and told the
stewardess he was a Puerto Rican "who wanted to go to Cuba
because he had personal problems here. He wanted to get.
away."
Nettles said it had not been determined whether he boar-
ded the plane in Chicago, where 16 passengers came aboard,
or in Miami, where the other 117 joined the flight.
The man also claimed he had a knife apd a bomb. Nettles
said witnesses reported he "kept switching something from
one pocket to another," but apparently nobody saw what it
was, and no one saw a knife or a bomb.
Upon reaching Havana, Gildermaster found visibility
down to zero and Jose Marti airport closed. Havana Control
Tower ordered him on to Camaguey, where the plane finally
set down about 4:30 p.m., an hour and a half after it was
hijacked.
The hijacker was taken away, Nettles said, by two
uniformed officers and two men in plain clothes, and the
plane took off again. Havana air authorities sent it over Jose
Marti again, and then passed it out of Cuban air space. Fuel
considerations, Delta officials said, precluded it going on to
San Juan:.