Oh, and on the impending destruction part? I worked for the last six months I was there for the Bureau of Land Management, and that job was one of the only good things about the place. In fact, when I gave my notice, I explained that if I could pack up the whole building and move it to Dallas, I'd never leave.
Anyway, one of the specialties of my department was organizing and archiving the satellite photos of Oregon and Washington for BLM business, and our conference room had a beautiful picture of Mount Hood from orbit as its wallpaper. What wasn't visible from the ground, but was eminently visible from space, was that Mount Hood produced two big pyroclastic flows at some time in its past, one running north of what's now Portland and one that runs well south. The flows left a big channel running right into downtown Portland, and I also noticed that Hood has a huge bulge facing right toward the city. I asked my BLM compatriots if Portland had any sort of evacuation plan if Hood suddenly went from being a dormant volcano to active (or worse, decided to imitate Mount Mazama and blow up with precious little warning), and was told that Portland didn't have a thing. I also noted that if Hood blew again, a la Mount St. Helens, it would blow toward Portland, and any pyroclastic flow would hit the Tualatin Mountains behind West Portland and cause it to slosh back like water hitting the back of a bathtub. The thought of Portland being buried under a half-mile of red-hot pumice is one that has helped me get to sleep many times in the decade since I escaped.
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Anyway, one of the specialties of my department was organizing and archiving the satellite photos of Oregon and Washington for BLM business, and our conference room had a beautiful picture of Mount Hood from orbit as its wallpaper. What wasn't visible from the ground, but was eminently visible from space, was that Mount Hood produced two big pyroclastic flows at some time in its past, one running north of what's now Portland and one that runs well south. The flows left a big channel running right into downtown Portland, and I also noticed that Hood has a huge bulge facing right toward the city. I asked my BLM compatriots if Portland had any sort of evacuation plan if Hood suddenly went from being a dormant volcano to active (or worse, decided to imitate Mount Mazama and blow up with precious little warning), and was told that Portland didn't have a thing. I also noted that if Hood blew again, a la Mount St. Helens, it would blow toward Portland, and any pyroclastic flow would hit the Tualatin Mountains behind West Portland and cause it to slosh back like water hitting the back of a bathtub. The thought of Portland being buried under a half-mile of red-hot pumice is one that has helped me get to sleep many times in the decade since I escaped.