Anyone else survive Mount St. Helens eruption?

[427mach1]

The other volcano thread got me thinking about Mount St. Helens eruption. It was my senior year in high school, Spokane, Washington. That fall, we had a teacher's strike that extended our summer vacation by about two weeks. We had a particularly bad winter and had several "snow days", which was quite unusual for Spokane. We made up some of the lost time by shortening the Christmas break, then spring break. Then on May 18, 1980, Mount Saint Helens exploded/erupted, sending a black cloud to the east. Around 4:00 PM, I was driving to work at the Black Angus Restaurant when the sky turned absolutely BLACK, turning daytime into night time. I called my mom and she told me about the eruption. I didn't believe her at first, since we were probably 300 miles away. Then it started to snow ash; we got about an inch in our front yard. Everything shut down and the city told us to wash the ash away with the garden hose. This caused all the storm sewer lines to clog, so they changed to an odd-even address cleaning. Once things started to get back to normal, the school officials determined that we would be short the required 180 days of school at graduation and would not have time to make it up. They contemplated delaying graduation, then decided that since we had already had so many interruptions, they let us graduate with fewer days.

My step-father was a mechanic at the time. Some genius was driving his Corvette from Portland to Spokane when he was overtaken by the ash cloud. He continued driving until the air filter clogged, then removed the air filter and continued driving. The ash acted as an abrasive and caused substantial internal damage to the engine. He somehow got his insurance to cover the damage!

Does anyone else have a Mount St. Helens story to share?

 

[BearBio]

I don't but have MANY, Many friends who do.

 

[gunsmith11]

I was in Spokane that day at a gun show. Packed up and left about 3PM did not know a thing, but shortly it started getting dark. I turned on the radio and heard about St. Helens. I was out of the area before the dust started settling. I remember it well

 

[Robb Barnes]

Heard about it on the radio where I was teaching so the wife and I drove up a hill outside of town close to where we live now and watched the huge plume crawl upward. Soon all our stuff had a coating of ash but luckily we had heard about just rinsing it off without wiping or scrubbing so no damage to car finishes at our house. Still, it was amazing to watch the event right after the blow and see all the widespread effects it had. There is still a mountain of ash along side I-5 just across one of the clogged rivers in Washington as you drive north on I-5.

 

[AJGUNNER]

It was hard to miss if you were anywhere in the NW. I was floating the Deschutes river and had been "out of touch" with the world for 4 days harassing the trout. On the drive home it took only a few miles on hwy 84 to figure out what had happened. We didn't see much ash in the Portland area until the wind shifted a few days later. I remember the fire dept loaning out hoses to clean the streets. I also remember making a bundle cleaning the gutters on most of the neighbors houses. It made the new Redhawk much easier to pay for.

 

[GunnyGene]

I was in Japan at the time, but my family members heard the boom in Aberdeen. Still lot's of souvenirs you can buy up there made out of the ash.

 

[toysoldier]

No volcano stories, but I did a lot of sandbagging during the '93 flood in Missouri.

 

[SAJohn]

I was on a commercial flight up to SEATAC when St. Helens did a big burp (not the giant blast). It was an impressive sight. The pilot made a big detour around the ash cloud.

Toysoldier, Why don't folks who live in floor areas do that sandbagging ahead of time?

John

 

[gasbag]

The eruption killed 57 people.
Those that are responding here probably aren't one of them. :roll:

As for myself I was about 50 miles away and saw the ash cloud rise out the right side car window.
I turned around and went home.

 

[Heliman]

I live in Vancouver, WA and we got plenty of ash from an earlier eruption and one that occurred a couple of weeks after the big one. I could see the May 18th eruption from my front door. Yes, I remember it well.......

Dave

 

[SAJohn]

One of those 57 killed was good old Harry R. Truman. What a great character, RIP.

 

[RSIno1]

Escaped that but have been in every L.A. earthquake since 1952. Still waiting for the big one. The Northridge Earthquake also killed 57.

 

[m657]

I lived in the Estacada area at the time pending eruption, and had just moved a couple hours south into the edge of the Oregon Outback. I still had seminars in PDX to attend regularly.

Often the Old Mt. St. Helens summit would have a complex stack of 3 or more lenticular cloud formations directly over the summit.

The day it finally blew I was headed comfortably south and my new cabin in the sticks.

In the morning there was a film of ash over all our rolling stock in the yard.

Out of state friends were enroute PDX to Seattle when it blew and had quite a story to relate. They were far enough north to miss the worst of the early debris.

Years later when the road were open, we toured the entire region. Reminded of the photos of 1908 Tunguska event.

 

[xtratoy]

Watched it from my front yard. I have seen several smaller ash eruptions that have sent steam and ash into the atmosphere in the years following the big bang.

 

[AJGUNNER]

Probably for the same reason that just before a hurricane makes land, everyone is at Home Depot buying plywood and flashlight batteries. The part I don't understand is what the heck did they all do with the plywood from last season, and doesn't everyone keep a flashlight and some batteries hanging around the house???

 

[Diamondtreo]

We were living in Keno Oregon at the time, just west of Klamath Falls while attending Oregon Tech. I remember seeing a light dusting of ash & the air sort of sparkled in the sunlight. My sis-in-law was living in Enumclaw, Wa., just to the North of the Mountain, and working for Mutual of Enumclaw Ins. They just about went broke paying out claims from ash damaged vehicles as much of their customer base was on the East side of the Cascades. Interesting comment, AJGUNNER, my wife bought me a Redhawk the next year when I graduated from Oregon Tech with my first Engineering degree.

 

[stevemb]

Had a successful summiting on Rainier not too long after. Seeing the whole top of a Mtn., just gone, was moving. Guides had stories.

 

[tinman]

As I said in another thread........my oldest just began working for Boeing..... in Seattle.......I don't need to be hearing this stuff. (hands over ears....La-La-La-La-La-La-La............) :shock:

 

[WAYNO]

I was on the Willamette River in my boat. Happened to look North when I first saw the mushroom cloud. It was incredible! Although the growing plume looked as it was in very slow motion, it soon reached extreme altitude while it was also growing in extreme girth. All the while I was trying to figure out the wind direction at the mountain. Again, the enormous plume seemed in slow motion, so as it grew it was difficult to see what direction the plume wanted to go. And I wanted to know, so I'd know I could safely watch, or get the heck out of the area.

It was a subsequent eruption that the wind finally brought the ash and plume into Oregon. What a mess! At times it was a near white-out as the ash fell on us, and it got absolutely everywhere and into everything. My rain gutters were packed with ash which soon turned to cement after the first rain. Then cleaning this hardened ash out of my gutters actually caused holes throughout my gutters. Obviously they were thin, but the ash was the final straw. The only reason I dwell on these ash issues is unless you've experienced it, you cannot imagine just how much ash there was, and just what it gets into. Car heaters. Windshield wipers. Air conditioners. Street drains. Everything! I defy you, even today, to open the hood of any car that was built prior to the eruptions and not find residual accumulations of ash in every nook and cranny of the engine compartment.

Sometime later, I was traveling in my car past Moses Lake, which is North and East of Mt. St. Helens. The ditches on each side of the highway were still heavily coated with hardened ash. These ditches looked like they'd been sprayed with cement, creating a cement-like trough on each side of the road.

Even today, traveling the I-5 corridor between Oregon and Centralia Washington, there are miles of ash still heaped in tremendous piles along the highway from where it was dredged out of the rivers.

I spend a lot of time in the mountains of the Cascades, and have done so most of my life. It's difficult to be up there and not think about which mountain is gonna blow next, and I wonder if it'll give me some warning.

WAYNO.

 

[Jim Puke]

Thanks for that interesting account, WAYNO.

 

[FastEd]

I spent a day up there about 20 years later.
An unforgettable experience.

 

[WIL TERRY]

We all survived in fine style. We were in Ohio at the time.

And so it goes...

 

[toysoldier]

Toysoldier, Why don't folks who live in floor areas do that sandbagging ahead of time?
John

It was a 40' flood crest. That's a lot of sandbags to keep around. In my area (Columbia MO) it wasn't even sand, as all the riverside sandpits were flooded. We used limestone quarry waste, which set up like poor cement.

 

[gramps]

Very interesting. Thanks for the thread. I worked in Anchorage, where the disaster plan in case of an eruption included sealing off all entrances with plastic, and duct tape. Then putting plastic covers over computers, ventilators etc. luckily, I have never experienced the phenomena.
gramps

 

[Jeepnik]

I reckon that anyone reading this, had they been born yet, survived Mount St. Helens. Heck, if they hadn't they more than likely wouldn't be reading this unless Gore has gone to Heaven and invented the heaven-net.

 

[jgt]

I was on my way to Spokane from The Tri-cities. Stopped in Othello to see some friends and ended up trapped there for three days. When the ash cloud came over, it was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. Then it turned black as the ash rained down. It was then I had an ah-haw moment. If that ash had been atomic fall out we would have all died. It came in every crack and cranny of the house. It piled up on the roof and on the ground. The lady there was a diabetic and need some insulin so the next day I put a couple of wet bandanas over my face like a robber and walked into town to the pharmacy to get her some insulin. Everything was still like a thick fog with ash hanging in the air but very still and quiet, no one was out moving around. I could hear cows mooing and horses whinnying from all around for a long way. It was like being on another planet. The sun shined through the third day and people were out trying to move the ash. They were using their snow shovels to push it off the roof and out of the driveway. In a wheelbarrow it would slosh like wet concrete and flow like it when dumped. They turned on the sprinklers in the yard and it just disappeared into the grass. For months the highway dept would spray chopped up straw on the side of the highways to try to keep the dust down because 18 wheelers would stir it up when they came by.
Many years later I moved to Kelso and lived on the Cowlitz River. It would turn gray with silt from the Toutle River. When they finished the coffer dam on the Toutle it stopped that and the Cowlitz River cleared up. It was still full of debris and it was not uncommon for me to pull out things like an English bicycle or garden hose I hooked when fishing. I would go into the blast zone and all the smashed up equipment was still there. The trees snapped off and most of the rest of them still laying all over like pick-up sticks. Ash was hundreds of feet deep in places and Spirit Lake was still there only different. When the vegetation came back the blast zone was a no hunting zone. The elk and deer herds got big and you could walk up to within about five feet of most of the animals easily before they would move away.
It was not something I would like to go through again, but It was one of the adventures I've had in my life.

 

[Mike Armstrong]

I was working in my office at UI in Moscow, ID drawing some overtime (Yeah, right....) to get a project done. My one little window faced west and there was one hellacious black cloud over where I lived in Pullman, WA eight miles west. Looked like the storm of the century, so I shut down and drove home to see what was going on. By that time it was twilight in town and absolutely silent; no birds, no dogs, no people. As I walked up my driveway I noticed a sulphur smell and thin threads of stuff like cobwebs started to filter down from the dark clouds above. Turns out it was molten sulphur that had hardened into thin filaments in the air.

We had a few inches of ash and many people insisted on driving in it and damaged and stalled their cars as a previous poster has recounted. I had to drive over to the middle of the scablands and rescue my boss whose Cadillac had died en route to Moscow from Seattle. My VW was unaffected for some reason.

The next year I was over in Big Sky Montana for a conference and cut out of some irrelevant morning sessions to go fishing on the upper Madison River. Noticed that all of the big trees along the river still had a coating of ash on their needles, and that was hundreds of miles away from Mt. St. Helens.

We were very worried about potential toxicity of the ash, and it did turn out to be very toxic--to BUGS!
We had great fruit crops for the next couple of years and absolutely champion berry harvests in the woods in Idaho. That "ill wind" DID blow some good!