St. Helens (film) - Factual Errors Contained in The Movie

Factual Errors Contained in The Movie

• There was no highway anywhere near Mount St. Helens numbered "607" as mentioned during a brief scene at the Mount St. Helens Lodge. There was, however, a major access road that led to Spirit Lake, called State Route 504.

• Real-life volcanologist David Johnston never fell in love with any woman while working at Mt. St. Helens. He did, however, fall in love with one woman prior to working on Alaska's Mt. Augustine Volcano.

• In the scene depicting the events of the May 18, 1980 eruption, there's a shot of a man driving a car down a dirt road and running into a tree. He later gets out of his car and starts videotaping. This was actually a play on the story by actual news photographer David Crockett, who worked for KOMO TV in Seattle. He actually never hit a tree. As the story goes, his path was blocked by rapidly developing mudflows taking out stretches of a logging road he was using as an access route.

• Harry Truman, contrary to his depiction in the movie, never owned a dog. In fact, at the time of the eruption he owned 16 cats and raccoons all of whom lived indoors with Truman.

• The waivers of liability mentioned in the movie were not mentioned in real life until the day before Mount St. Helens erupted (they depict April 30 as the date of mention in the movie), and weren't even issued in Cougar as the movie suggests. Instead, they were brought up per request of then-Governor Dixy Lee Ray and then-Washington State Patrol Chief Robert Landon as a means to appease scores of home and property owners staging a showdown in the town of Toutle. The movie also makes no mention of the scores of such homeowners being led to the mountain by a State Patrol-led convoy after the aforementioned waivers had been signed.

• David Johnston didn't have to hike Coldwater Ridge to get to his observation post (the ridge depicted in the movie for his outpost), and the movie also erroneously omitted the fact that he had a truck and camper up there. The way up Coldwater Ridge at the time was a series of switchback logging roads that led to a small clearing, at which his truck and camper were located. Incidentally, the propane tank and remnants of his camper were found three miles away from where his observation site was located, in 1993.

• There were no recorded incidences of any pilot in the area running into disoriented birds, or vice versa.

• The movie depicts David Jackson getting involved in a fight. In reality, David Johnston did not get involved in such a fight.

• In a fight scene between Otis Kaylor and one of the 3 loggers, Otis Kaylor gets pushed onto the floor and does a somersault. Whilst doing this somersault, his hat falls off. Otis Kaylor quickly then gets up and his opponent swings a wooden stick at his face but thankfully misses. It's at this moment where you see Otis Kaylor's hat magically reappearing on his head.

• The first "newscast" in the movie mentions the Iran Hostage Crisis as being one of the major newsmakers of the day. It however erroneously states several figures. The movie states that there were 53 hostages, yet only that many were held to the end. In that newscast, the anchor also says, "Today marked the 129th day of captivity for the 53 American Hostages..." On March 20, 1980, when activity began, that would've actually put the real duration for the hostage crisis at 106 days.

• The Blue Zone and Red Zone, boundary lines limiting and/or prohibiting access around Mt. St. Helens from April 30, 1980 until 1982, are erroneously depicted in the movie.