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Washington Governor Dixi Lee Ray invited President Jimmy Carter, US Senator Warren Magnuson and others to view the destruction.
Description and questions for discussion: Alicia wrote, he governor invited the President to come and view the destruction, to get a lesson of a events from the scientists, and to listen to the governor plea for federal emergency funds.The president and governor then took a helicopter ride to view the path of destruction.The president was later quoted as telling one of his staffers to make sure the governor didn ride in his helicopter, that she rode in a separate one. Governor Dixi Lee Ray ran for governor of Washington on the Democratic ticket.As soon as she got into office, she changed her allegiance to the Republican party.She also was the major factor why Harry Truman didn leave his home.She made such a public figure out of him, to the point schools were paying to helicopter him from his home to their classrooms to talk about the mountain and why he wouldn leave.He was made to feel he be letting all the children down if he caved and let the mountain win.She also refused to follow the advice of the scientists to the point where they were politically pressured by superiors to make lighter of the danger than was truly believed.Because of that the red zone (the area that became the area of catastrophic destruction) was identified as much smaller than the scientists truly felt should be applied.They also were kept from talking about how the mountain could laterally erupt and were told to talk only about the mountain erupting from the top, up into the sky.The scientists also advised that the homes be evacuated many weeks sooner than Governor Ray would allow for, mandating evacuation mere days before the eruption.Did you know people were lined up on the highway that morning to go in and get more of their stuff from their homes and watched the eruption from the highway. She also interrupted that conference shown in the picture so much so that President Carter didn want to be in the same space as her as is evident by his requesting his own helicopter.What do you think about President Jimmy Carter? What do you think about the role of Governor Dixi Lee Ray?