The Fire Below Us: Remembering Mount St. Helens

On May 18, 1980, Washington state's Mount St. Helens literally blew her top, leaving a crater a mile wide and a half mile deep, and spewing smoke, lava, and ash for miles around the site. 20-year-old filmmaker Michael Lienau was working as a cinematographer covering the story, and now, some 14 years later, he has compiled a compelling and slickly produced documentary chronicling the historical, scientific, and human aspects of the eruption. The Fire Below Us charts the events leading up to the fateful day, commenting on the miscalculations of the safety zone set by the state (which was way too small), and showing clips of the lively 83-year-old Harry Truman who refused to leave his residence in the shadow of the mountain and is presumed to have died. Tasteful re-enactments convey the horrors that contemporary interviewees recall of their experiences during the eruption (one logger, badly burned, was rescued by helicopter; another couple who were fishing were swept down river in a torrent of rushing water and pounding logs). Lienau, himself, talks about his ordeal on the mountain and the religious conversion he underwent there. While the program is a tad over-produced (segment title cards feature quotes from no less than the Bible, Dante, and Milton, and the writing is occasionally a little on the florid side), The Fire Below Us is, for the most part, an excellent documentary about one of our era's biggest natural disasters. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)