AllMovie

Witness firsthand one of the most spectacular natural disasters in modern history as five-hundred-and-forty million tons of ash and volcanic rock are blasted twelve miles into the sky in the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. As aerial photography offers a new and entirely unique perspective on this historic eruption, personal recollections of survivors and witness paint a vivid picture of nature's awe-inspiring fury. A conversation with the Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Mountain geologists presents the prehistoric secrets of the mountain before taking a detailed look at the natural recovery of the landscape nearly thirty years after the eruption.