Twenty-five years ago, the Weyerhaeuser Co. wanted to keep cutting trees on the flanks of rumbling, spitting Mount St. Helens. But to play it safe, the company moved loggers 15 miles from the mountain -- and thought that would be far enough.
Twenty-five years ago, the Weyerhaeuser Co. wanted to keep cutting trees on the flanks of rumbling, spitting Mount St. Helens.
But to play it safe, the company moved loggers 15 miles from the mountain -- and thought that would be far enough.
On the Friday before the volcano erupted, Dick Ford and his Weyerhaeuser crew tried to burn some brush, a project that would have kept them in harm's way on the fateful Sunday morning. But the electronic starter torch was balky.
"Fortunately for me and my crew, it wouldn't light," he said.
And they left for the weekend.
This spring, Ford is back, preparing to harvest the first crop of trees planted after Mount St. Helens spewed 600-degree gases and tons of debris in its eruption May 18, 1980.
"What excites me is that you look back and see a success," said Ford, a forester who worked at Mount St. Helens before the eruption and led reforestation efforts afterward. "It surprises us how healthy the trees are."
In January, loggers began thinning trees on the first 1,400 acres replanted. Through the summer, crews will remove 200 trees per acre, leaving about 160 behind to continue to grow. The logs will be sent to Weyerhaeuser's Green Mountain Sawmill and cut into dimension lumber.
The Federal Way-based company was the largest private landowner in the area and lost thousands of acres of trees -- worth about $66 million.
The eruption:
-- Devastated nearly 68,000 acres -- about 14 percent -- of the company's tree farm, including old growth trees.
-- Damaged 36,500 acres of marketable timber of various ages and species.
-- Destroyed 26,000 acres of young trees.
-- Damaged 5,500 acres of lakes, streams and lands being reforested.
-- Ruined three logging camps with buildings, equipment and vehicles. Crews working in the recovered forests this spring say they recognize the significance of the first harvest.
"It's a big deal because 25 years ago we didn't know what would happen with this land," said Bob Keller, commercial thinning manager for Weyerhaeuser, who is directing the thinning in the blast zone.
Logging and thinning crews were working out of three camps in the woods surrounding the mountain in the weeks before the blast. The state created a Red Zone from 3 to 7 miles out from the peak. Access in this zone was restricted to scientists, law enforcement and other officials, according to the United States Geological Survey. A Blue Zone offered access during daylight hours to loggers and property owners with special permits.
Weyerhaeuser officials lobbied to keep the Red Zone as small as possible so they could continue working the tree farm.
Weyerhaeuser's executives were in constant contact with geologists, Ford said. The worst they feared was flooded rivers, avalanches and ash fallout. No one expected the top of the mountain would blow off, he said.
But to be conservative, Ford moved his crew 15 miles from the mountain.
They went home for the weekend.
Ford was digging clams with his family on Sunday morning when he heard radio reports of the blast.
"The mountain had gone off. It's huge. A lot of people were dead," he remembers hearing. He didn't know whether any workers were among the dead.
He later found out that three contractors working to thin a patch of trees 15 miles out died. Another was severely burned. The company was sued by some injured in the blast who said Weyerhaeuser didn't take proper precautions to make sure people stayed out of the way of the volcano. The company settled with a few of those people.
A week after the blast, Ford crawled into his home base of Camp Baker to survey the damage.
"I wasn't anxious to see things," he said. "Ten years worth of work was destroyed. It was like going to look at your wrecked car."
Company officials began chronicling the damage with helicopter trips. Buses, logging equipment, trucks and supplies were all gone. But much of the logs were salvageable. Leaving them would invite disease and insect infestation.
Six weeks later, Ford and his crew went to the blast zone. They had to create maps to document the damage. About 20 million feet of logs washed out of two logging camps in the blast and were clogging the river. Of that, 12 million was saved.
"The question was never, 'Are we going to replant?'" Ford said. "The question is: 'How are we going to replant?'"
Weyerhaeuser's forestlands had recovered from devastation before. The company lost 16 billion board feet of lumber -- four times as much as lost on the mountain -- during the Columbus Day Storm in October 1962.
Timber company foresters weren't sure how the ash would affect the regeneration. The top layer of ash had the texture of talcum power. When it dried out, it was concrete. Water wouldn't penetrate it.
On June 18, 1980, company foresters planted test trees to see how they would respond to the ash. Seedlings were planted in ash, in a mixture of ash and soil, and in soil only.
"The only results that we were happy with was the trees in soil," Ford said. That meant workers had to dig down below the ash to plant the trees.
In October, crews began pulling the ash-covered logs out of the blast zone. During the next two years, more than 1,000 workers participated in the effort. In busy times, more than 600 truckloads of salvaged logs were removed each day. About 850 million board feet of timber was saved -- enough lumber to build 85,000 three-bedroom homes.
The replanting began in 1981. Crews dug down several inches through the ash to plant more than 18.4 million seedlings over seven years.
"We could have planted faster but we wanted to use our own trees," Ford said.
The company relied on its own tree nurseries to supply the seedlings to repopulate the forests.
Weyerhaeuser helped establish the national monument following the blast. It traded 17,000 acres of damaged timberland that became part of the monument for 4,850 acres of young trees.
Ford now manages Weyerhaeuser's Forest Learning Center and relives the days following the blast on a regular basis. He said he expects the center -- which tells the story of the eruption, the aftermath and the forest's return -- to see lots of visitors for the 25th anniversary.
As for the trees, it turns out that the ash may have been a good thing, Keller said.
It acted as mulch and helped hold water in the soil. It also prevented weeds from growing. "The trees are bigger than I would anticipate," Keller said.
And in some cases the trees in the blast zone are bigger than ones outside that were planted at the same time.
The final harvesting of the land will begin in 2025 -- 45 years after the eruption. Then the trees will be replanted again.
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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
