3 - Mt. Saint Helens

Read about Mt. St. Helens at wikipedia

We woke up on this Sunday morning and were having a leisure breakfast as is usual for a Sunday. The sun was very bright and it held promise of a very nice sunny day. I think it was at ten AM that we heard a big boom. It was like maybe a sonic boom. Gradually the sky started to darken like twilight and the day started to look like it was sunset. We were able to learn that Mt. St. Helens had erupted after sleeping about one hundred years. We had been alerted to a possible eruption for a couple of weeks or so and after three or four warnings didn’t pay too much attention.

This day was to be special as Mrs. Conyers a long time teacher at St. Joseph’s School where all the kids had gone was to retire and everyone was to gather for a reception in her honor in the gym. As the hours ticked by it got real ghostly and quiet as the ash started to fall. It was a white powder and a little gritty like sand. It didn’t get inside the house but if you went outside you would track it in on your shoes. We learned from the radio and television that it was very abrasive and not to rub it.

We went to Evelyn’s (Mrs. Conyers) reception and she said well I know that when I quit teaching it would be a real special day but I had not expected quite so much as a volcanic eruption to mark it. The day progressed to night and things stayed kind of eerie like and everything seemed too not normal. The next day was still the same and we didn’t have much traffic on the roads. People who were traveling on I-90 between Seattle, Ellensburg, Moses Lake and Spokane was stopped and made to wait for the air to clear. Some people had to stay about a week before they would let them continue on. Traffic was routed over Stevens Pass and up through Bridgeport to Spokane. The pumice fell across the state clean to Missoula Montana but it wasn’t as thick there as it was in Washington.

The milk bottling plant in Moses Lake didn’t operate for about a week and we got milk from Seattle as the ash wasn’t as thick there as it was in Yakima, Moses Lake and Spokane. When we got our first truck in from Moses Lake the next week it had about twelve inches of ash on the roof. We scraped it off and filled a six foot by three foot dumpsters with it. They were sure it wasn’t harmful to humans but it sure did a number on motor’s and machinery. It made them wear out in about six months. The state highway crews went out with sanding trucks to sand the roads to keep the ash from blowing around when the cars and trucks started to move again. On the rocks and beside the roads where it is not disturbed you can still find it after twenty years. The fruits and vegetables grown here the next year was of real good quality and we had the best apple crop we had grown in many years.

Stand Out Happenings 1-Disasters 2-When The Rail Car Blew <Previous 3-Mt. St. Helens

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