Remembering Mt. St. Helens

 

If you were living in Washington on Sunday, May 18, 1980, do you remember what you were doing? I was walking to church on that sunny day and remember hearing what I thought was a sonic boom. (Fairchild AFB is just west of town.) An hour later, I fled home and was among thousands of Washingtonians wondering WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING?

At 8:32 that morning, Mt. St. Helens erupted as the result of an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale. Here's what happened:

• Eruption lasted 9 hours
• Nearly 230 square miles of forest were destroyed
• The explosion blew a crater 1968.5 feet deep and almost 1 1/2 miles wide from rim to rim on the mountain's face
• The speed of the subsequent landslide was estimated to be between 70 and 150 mph
• As much as 600 feet of debris were deposited in the nearby North Fork Toutle River
• An estimated 7000 big game animals were killed in the blast
• An estimated 12 million chinook and coho fingerlings and 40,000 young salmon were destroyed
• 60 people living near the mountain were killed

I remember gathering my family close, including my future son-in-law. I remember them playing RISK for hours. I remember waking up Monday and Tuesday morning to everything coated with white ash..... and nobody knew how dangerous it might be to breathe or to our cars. Spokane, among many eastern Washington cities, stood in shocked stillness. 

Now, 45 years later, we still see white streaks in the banks along I-90 when we head west. And I wonder how many baby girls born that day were named Helen or Ashley???

Will Mt. St. Helens blow again? She is considered the volcano in the Cascades most likely to erupt again in our lifetimes,  and scientists expect it to erupt again though the timing and magnitude are uncertain. (So says Google.)