Few Neighbors Quake at Thought of Volcanic Danger

Jamie Wright’s mother was upset when she heard her daughter was moving to this town in the shadow of a volcano.

“My mother told me, ‘You know, it’s going to be the next volcano to go,’ ” Wright, 26, said recently.

“The last time Shasta erupted, it popped this way,” said Mike Jorgenson, pointing toward his house. “I’m hoping next time it goes the other way.”

Wright and Jorgenson continue to live in Mt. Shasta, which has a population of 3,600. Another 3,500 live in nearby Weed and 1,600 in McCloud.

The three towns are at the base of Mt. Shasta, which is considered among the most likely volcanoes in the lower 48 states to erupt sometime in the future.

Local government planners and most residents are nonchalant about living on a powder keg.

The last time Mt. Shasta erupted was about 1786, they said. They expect plenty of warning if the volcano prepares to blow again.

The town of Mt. Shasta was founded in the 1800s as a lumber camp, and concern about volcanic eruption is relatively recent.

Homes and businesses are scattered across canyons that could be filled by molten rock or mud flows from melting snow during an eruption, city administrator Al Meneni said.

Local government planners now consider volcanic dangers, but building goes ahead because government officials usually decide that emergency plans are adequate to carry out evacuations if necessary, he said.

The U.S. Geological Survey is stepping up efforts to educate communities about volcanic hazards in hopes that planners will take the dangers more seriously, said agency spokesman C. Dan Miller.

“There’s some pretty scary situations” involving development around some volcanoes, said Miller, who is chief of the agency’s disaster assistance program at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash.

The USGS has met recently with local government officials in communities around volcanoes in Washington and Oregon, providing them with updated assessments of dangers. The federal agency plans to work its way into California soon.

“Local officials should take the dangers into consideration. I don’t think it’s real intelligent, after what happened at Mt. St. Helens. The almighty dollar sometimes outweighs intelligence,” said Jorgenson, 42.

Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, leaving 57 people dead, devastating 230 square miles and blanketing areas hundreds of miles to the east with volcanic ash.

About 70 miles southeast of Mt. Shasta is Lassen Peak, which is surrounded by a national park. There is little development around Lassen Peak, which last erupted several times between 1914 and 1921.

“There is a risk around Shasta,” said Dave Ashcraft, a Lassen National Park ranger. “But it’s a calculated risk. Look at the San Andreas earthquake fault. People there know there’s a threat. They’re not boarding up their houses and leaving.”