Indeed!

I'm so sorry. Do you have friends or relatives to worry about?

@Carin No. Not in that immediate area. That I know of.

@Infoguy211 Hasn't shown up on my phone yet. Plus, I've got CNN on the tv and it hasn't even shown up in the crawl at the bottom of the screen, let alone been announced as "Breaking News". I find that really unacceptable.

@KKGator Not until they find some way to sensationalize it.

It's not on Yahoo news either, with over 200 killed & 800 or so missing...should be the top story!

@bingst Or it turns out that some white tourists were killed....

How long has it been since Mt. St. Helen's eruption? When I lived in PNW 1993 to 1999 we kept hearing about evacuation routes and those towns likely in the path of lava/rocks. My youngest daughter always liked to see "Mt. Reindeer". We had a noticable earthquake while we lived there, that was exciting! I say that as a flatlander who doesn't have to deal with tremors. I recall that Mt Rainier is way overdue for a good blow.

@HippieChick58 St. Helen's erupted in 1980. Most of the fallout headed east and the coast was not much affected. It is a great place to visit today. [mountsthelens.com]

Some Scientists are concerned about activity in the ocean right close to the coast. This could cause a tsunami. @JackPedigo

@HippieChick58 [scientificamerican.com]

We in the US have better infrastructure to withstand natural disasters & to access & rescue survivors. It breaks my heart that it so often seems to be the less wealthy areas of the globe that are hit with more than their share of earthquakes, tsunamis, terrible storms or volcanic eruptions.

@nicknotes -- We don't need to be concerned about Mt. St. Helens all that much. The real concern is that Washington, Oregon, and far northern California are on a huge segment of tectonic plates that form the Cascadia subduction zone. Tension along this line has been building for a long time. The big concern is that the entire length of the zone slips at the same time or in a rhythmic cascading from north to south. Both events could be a disaster of major proportions for more than 500 miles of coastline.

[oregonlive.com]

Yes ...that is what I had in mind. @evidentialist

Even in America you can still drown when a Tsunami hits....@Carin

@nicknotes & Yet it rarely happens.... Are we lucky & they unlucky, or are natural disasters actually a factor in keeping underdeveloped nations from progressing? I do wonder.

IMO religion keeps countries from developing....The USA is an exception. Our Constitution over ruled the religious nonsense. @Carin

@nicknotes Excellent observation! When I was in Europe in the 60's, the Catholic countries there almost seemed bordering on 3rd world i many ways...

The world would be so much better without religion. When Christianity took over Europe we had the "Dark Ages" 1000 years of wars and ignorance. @Carin

Wasn't Krakatoa's biggest eruption back in the 1800s when the vibrations, etc, were even felt in Australia?

@Triphid Late 1800’s to early 1900’s but I’ve been watching Pavlof in Alaska.
There’s been rippling and other geological anomalies in the past few years throughout Russia and Canada some of us are concerned that with the rapid climate change is that we might see a chain of eruptions that could extend through the pacific rim

@48thRonin Yes well Volcanologists are concerned these days that one or more the Super Volcanoes, i.e. Krakatoa, Yellowstone Caldera, the Big Caldera around Vesuvius or the Siberian region may suddenly erupt in the next 200 or so years.
IF Yellowstone goes then most of the US north will be under a massive ash cloud stretching from west to east and lasting for months.
If, the Vesuvius Caldera goes Naples, half of Italy and right across to Sicily will be destroyed and if Krakatoa goes then 45-60% of Indonesia will be made almost uninhabitable for the better part of between 3 and 5 decades.
IF, and this is the 'good news' btw, the Siberian Caldera goes off again as it did way back in geological times then another E.L.E., much worse that it caused historically before, we probably won't be around to see the end of it anyway.

If memory serves Krakatoa tore itself apart when it erupted in the 1800s and has been slowly re-building itself ever since, there's a massively huge magma chamber beneath it as there is under the Vesuvius Caldera, Yellowstone and the Siberian region, all are still bubbling away merrily and probably slowly building up pressure that eventually will have to go somewhere and you can guess where that will be.

I thought that was Indonesia too. I remember that Xmas too because we got a money order to make a large (for us) donation & didn't want to get years of junk mail from the charity because of it, so it's silly I don't recall the area affected.