"Where were YOU when...?"

Remembering
Mt. St. Helens,
May 18, 1980

Updated 5/30/98!

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Losses

Chris: "My memories of the Mt. St. Helens eruption are a bit different. A friend and high school classmate was killed while putting out seismic sensors to record the explosion. After 20 years, the tears still flow. He was too young to die (only 27)."

"At 8:32 am, 18 May, my husband and son were in the backyard of our Silverlake home. We are 5 miles from Toutle, WA. They looked up and saw the most enormous cloud filling the sky. A bright and sunny May day turned into a historic event that was to continue for months."

"Friends from Toutle grabbed their clothes and kids and moved in with us. We pondered whether to leave and go to higher ground. Evacuations were taking place frantically. People from Toutle up to the mountain were all trapped, because mud flows wiped out the bridges that ran back and forth across the river. Our friends' son was up there somewhere. No communication, power lines down. Helicopters flying. Adrenalin kicked in...we all were wired and ready for flight. A make-shift morgue was set up at the Toledo airport. Schools were opened for evacuees, but closed because it was too close to the river and mud flows. The sheriff finally told everyone to leave because of possible pyroclastic gasses that could suffocate you. We all were sent to a logging camp with little trailers, where we lived for many a day. The Red Cross fed us, and mostly people just walked around looking dazed."

"We were allowed back in to our homes for a period of 2 hours every few days, to feed our abandoned animals. Otherwise, anyone caught within the towns of Toutle or Silverlake would be considered looters and shot, we were told. My husband lost his job that day. It took many months before the company he worked for could gather its wits and find new logs to farm. The magnitude of the destruction that took place is just not explainable. Miles and miles around that mountain turned into a primordial landscape. The people who were camped in the safe zone called Green Zone, were crushed by trees and melted by the hot gasses. Many were never found."

"For months afterwards, we were occasionally alerted by sirens and had to leave our homes. Yes, we became nervous wrecks. The children were afraid to go anywhere, thinking they would get stranded from the family. They were on television, they were interview by Ted Koppel in a magazine. My son became a mini-celebrity when he told a reporter he didn't want to leave his dog to be harmed by the pyroclastic flows. When it aired, dozens called the station offering to take his dog in. Weeks later they reinterviewed him for the concerned viewers. But finally, we all recovered from the stress, terror, sadness. What a beautiful, powerful force that lives in our back yard. We love it, but mostly learned to respect and fear the strength of Mother Earth." Karla Halsan Mattila, Silverlake,Washington (klabo@cport.com)

Near Misses

Dianna: "I was there...or could have been...too! My ex-husband wanted to take the children to the Portland Zoo, so I accompanied them as we lived in Eugene and it was such a long trip. We continued on to Mt. St. Helens; that part of the trip was completely unplanned. He tried to get me and kids to camp up on the mountain the night of the 17th. Had we stayed over, we'd have missed church on Sunday morning and I felt very strongly that we should be at church on Sunday and not on the mountain. I insisted on being taken back to Portland...hence, I and the kids are alive today! When we returned home from church the next day, my brother called to tell me to turn on the TV. He knew we'd gone to the zoo and to Mt. St. Helens also...My children are now convinced that church is the place to be on Sunday!" (kpooh@ptialaska.net)

Laura:Hi, We live in Burbank, WA, but on the evening of May 16th we drove with our sons, ages five and three, to Ellensburg to spend the weekend with some close friends. All went well, we were having such a good time. Sunday morning we all went to church, as is the norm. While sitting in the worship service, police officers came in and asked the pastor to end services, as Mt. St. Helens had exploded. We were all in shock, but after the pastor instructed the ushers to collect the tithes and offerings, and service was concluded we ventured back to their farm house. All together there were four children under the age of five (three confirmed hyperactive) in that small house, and us four adults. The gray ash spread thick. There were no sounds outside. The police and emergency crews directed all residents to stay inside. Grocery stores remained open, but we were all advised to stay home unless it was an emergency. My youngest son, at the time, was an extreme asthmatic, but thank God, I brought his medicine with me. He developed an extreme allergy to volcanic ash, and to this day, cannot get near the stuff without his skin turning bluetoned. We watched the cattle, the next day, desperate for food, run through the ash covered alfalfa field, and then turn around quickly to eat from the hay that was shaken clean. By Tuesday, my best friend and I ventured out of the house, to the store. Yes it was an emergency, as we knew if we didn't get out, away from the kids we would snap! We came back with supplies, including Oreo's. Thank God for Safeway. Our husbands took the same journey later too! The road crews used snow plows to clear the streets. By Thursday, the Washington State Patrol, led a caravan down the old Canyon Highway to Yakima doing 25 miles an hour, with panty hose on our air filter, and a spare air filter just in case we crawled to Yakima. Yakima was also covered in ash, but not like Ellensburg. Yakima had maybe an inch to our four or five inches that we had received. After we left Yakima, the roads were clear and no one at home really understood what we had been through. Laura Schmidt

Witnesses

Norma: "It was a Sunday morning. I was working at my WA state office in Tumwater. We had been watching the mountain daily for a year as it spouted steam. We could see the peak over the range of hills behind the Olympia airport. After the eruption we couldn't see Mt. St. Helens anymore at all."

"I jumped in my car and followed the crowd to a better vantage point and watched it most of the day."

"My in-laws lived at Glenoma which is above Morton (50 miles east of Chehalis) and they got the bulk of the ash. It went NE to Yakima so all of that country inbetween got a lot of ash. The ash turned morning to night and there were tremblers and lightening strikes in it. The guys had to crawl up on the roof and shovel it off so the roof wouldn't cave in and everybody gathered at their house and all were scared to death, they thought it was the end of the planet."

"The next time it steamed a little my mother-in-law jumped in the car and drove to Portland alone. Nobody would go with her, told her it was nothing, but she wasn't taking any chances. I was able to fly over it in July that year and the devastation was overwhelming. It looked like a Chocolate Sundae where somebody had taken the cherry off the top and scraped a funnel down one side with a spoon. You can still see ash deposits on the Cowlitz driving into Longview from the North."

"Instead of leaving a desert as predicted originally, the ash seemed to work as a fertilizer and everything is growing back bigger and better, except for all the old growth timber. I can't believe it has been 18 years." Norma Lewis (norie@localaccess.com)

"We were on Vashon Island, in Puget Sound. It was a beautiful day. Then a large cloud shaped like a mushroom poked up south of Mt Rainier. We finally turned on the TV, and that cloud wasn't weather conditions. It was St Helen's. And to think I had to talk my husband out of a trip there that day. He was sure he could get us close to the mountain. I am sure he would have." (UpsaDaisey@aol.com)

Joan: "My husband's 50th birthday was celebrated with a big bang...Mt. St Helen's. Here in Spokane, the darkness came across the sky like a window shade slowly cutting off the sun and sprinkling the ground with a fine white powder. Some thought the world had come to an end...old folks and shut-ins felt helpless and cut off from the world and neighbors. Their contact with the world was the radio and TV; the Spokesman Review newspaper that I delivered surely was appreciated.

"We scooped the white ash into pop bottles and my husband labeled them with his wine labels: 'Mt. St. Helens Extra Dry.' A bucket full still stands in the corner of the garage and sometimes I use a cupful to sand blast glass goblets in my engraving business. Others used it on the ceramics they were working on. Mother-in-law made a pitcher that stands on my microwave. The picture on it is a subtle shape of the mountain half blown away and glazed with her ash."

"My daughter came home from Seattle on the first train out and, in Ritzville, she scooped up a paper cup full of the course pellets. A memorable day for all of us...tuck your stories away for your children and grandchildren to read some day." Joan Meade Morse (JMeade41@aol.com)

John: "I was there too, having traveled up from San Francisco to see Mother Earth's *big zit* erupt ;-) What an experience!" John Follesdal (http://www.angelfire.com/tx/follesdal)

Dan: "My wife and I got together that day, and a week later decided to get married--18 years later we are still married and Happy, so much for a big bang. We use it to remember our special times. Had one he++ of time time cleaning my shop parking lot, and we had to box it all so it did not go in our storm drain. (wb@wvi.com)

Ginni: "I remember that day very well, I was probably one of the few people who did not get to see the pictures of it when it was happening. My television quite the day before. However, My father was working for the State Hwy Maintenance Dept out of Salem. When the ash started falling in Portland he was sent to help sweep the streets. I remember him complaining about no matter how he wrapped his sandwiches the ash would get in. He said it was one of the worst jobs that he had ever had as the ash would get into everything and you could not get rid of it. I was very hard on the machines. He only had to spend about a week doing this but he said it was the longest week ever." Ginni Morey (gmorey@ix.netcom.com)

Robert: "Ok, you asked for it!! First off, St. Helens was my 5th. Mt. Spur dumped on us when we lived in Anchorage. I was working at Kenai, Alaska when Mt. Redoubt across Cook Inlet let go. At King Salmon when Sheshalden whooped it up and Mt. Gerdine (an island in the Cook Inlet) decided to erupt as we were flying across the inlet headed to Iliamna. Back to St. Helens, a customer of ours at Centralia, WN asked for a service call on his equipment Sat. May 17th. We flew up there from Hillsboro that morning and were ready to head home shortly after noon. We decided to take a little 'dog leg' just to see what was going on over at the hill. I got Seattle Air Route Traffic Control 'on the horn', told them where we were going and asked them to warn us when we were approaching the 10 mile 'red zone'. As we got closer to the mountain, it looked like we were too close and ARTC hadn't said a word yet so I called them and asked what the story was - to which they replied '758 Romeo Lima - turn left heading 050' a vector straight over the mountain top!! Result?? 2:00 PM Saturday after- noon we went dead center over the top of the hill, stood the aircraft up on one wing, and snapped pictures straight down the throat of the volcano!! 10 AM the next morning she blew!!"

"For all the tales about the volcanic dust, all it is is a very finely powdered 'pumice' like powdered carborundum. Plow it into the ground and you have the richest soil imaginable - natural fertilizer. Y'all would have enjoyed watching our neighbor lady across the street in Anchorage come out with her pots and pans and the garden hose using it for 'scouring powder'!! Careful how much you breathe! Do you like inhaling powdered glass?? A bit tough on anything that inhales air - cars - trucks - trains - animals - people..." Robert P. Lewis (cheechako@northwest.com)

Lois: "Yes, I was here too. Was living in San Rafael, CA, but came up for a Dr. appt as I had lived here before. Kept telling everyone that I felt I had a right to be here if anything happened. As it happened, I hadn't listened to the radio and left Tri Cities with a couple who wanted to see a house I owned in Coulee City. We drove to Coulee City, noticed the clouds, but it never occurred to us it would come DOWN. We were in the garage in CC when everything went black. The people I was with had a medical problem, no medication (a rare one) with them. CC had only minimal stuff, so they decided to drive back to Tri Cities. However, as he was night blind, and she didn't drive I took over after he almost knocked down a stop sign. Drove down the hiway around Sun Lakes Park, took back roads and ended up on I-90 almost to Moses Lake before the car conked out from that powdery ash. A patrol picked us up and took us into Moses Lake where they could get the medication they needed. We were stuck in Moses Lake 2 days before they could get the roads clear enough to take cars through. The engine in our car was ruined, but we got a ride with someone else going to the Tri Cities where I had left my car in a parking lot. The Tri Cities only got sandy stuff. People were actually out playing golf when we pulled into Pasco. We thought the whole world was probably covered after being in Moses Lake. The ash was 5-6 inches deep there. Kind of scary, but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. My mother always said I liked living dangerously. Afterwards, when I brushed my hair that fine powdery ash cut right through my hair, made a real mess. Had to have my hair cut short. There is still ash in a lot of places along the roads and highways.

The whole thing was a strange unreal experience. Even the people who weren't in all the ash felt the impact. I got back from Coulee City to Pasco where my friend Donna (who I had been visiting) was wearing my shoes. She said, "I knew you were in trouble and the only way I could think of to be close was to wear your shoes". The next day we were looking at a newspaper photo of the explosion. We all thought it looked like a figure of a woman standing in the plume. Laughing about it, we said it must be "Pele" the mythical Hawaiian goddess of the volcano. Our friend Randy got out large sheets of paper suggested we should each try to draw a picture of the figure as we thought "Pele" should look. Donna and I worked together, but Randy was drawing on his own. Strangely enough, when we finished, the figures and faces all looked alike, and we hadn't even watched what the other was doing.

I think I'll skip going for the commemoration celebration."

Linda: "I stood at my back door and watched the plume of ash and debris soar towards the sky. Just prior to it exploding I had flown over it on my way to Hawaii with a friend and you could see the bubble and the steam coming from it. It wasn't too long after my arrival back home (Lived in Forest Grove, Oregon) that my air space was filled with what looked like a snow storm. The branches on my plum tree in my front yard drooped all the way down to the ground from the weight of the ash. We lived in a cul-de-sac area and all my neighbors got out their hoses and we spent weeks trying to clear the road of the ash. It was a fine powdery substance to touch.....but when you got it wet it was like walking on ice. It became a silky-like substance then. My garden had continued to grow but when it was done growing I had the strangest looking vegetables I had ever seen in my life. In fact, so strange that I don't think I ate any of them. My children collected ash and filled jars with it so they could bring it home to their friends in Baker City and show it off. As I watched from my back door and watched the sky get darker and darker, it made me realize that there are some things we just can't control.......Mt. St. Helen's was one of those things. I thought it was pretty exciting myself to be able to witness something like that...but I was one of the lucky ones and got to see it from a distance. The distance I lived from the mountain itself and how well I was able to see it, just shows us the kind of power that nature can show us. Just like the last woman said......my hair........ughhhh! it was terrible. It made your hair feel like straw!" Linda Spivey-Bjorklund (lbjorklund@triax.com) Baker City, Oregon

Interested Parties

"I was in Britain when St. Helen's blew. I hadn't gotten up yet and the lady of the house came shouting up the stairs, 'Your volcano is exploding!' We spent the rest of the day watching TV. It was almost scarier not being present to see exactly what was happening. But I also got a chance to fly over the volcano a year or so later in a small prop plane--ash was still evident in the surrounding air. We were breathing it inside the plane. We flew around the cone without getting too close."

"BTW it is recommended that you keep pantyhose/old nylons handy in the car; a couple of layers of nylon stocking over the intake valve or your face can sharply reduce ash consumption." Marge Jodoin (mjjodoin@webtv.net)

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© 1998 Marjorie J. Jodoin, all rights reserved. Emailed stories are the property of the originating author. Mt. St. Helens photos are the property of M.J. Jodoin, 1981. Please do not reproduce page, photos or text without my express permission. I'm always interested in feedback. E-mail me at mjjodoin@webtv.net Thanks for stopping by!

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