I was stationed at Fairchild AFB at the time and we had an airshow going on that weekend. We had to get all the aircraft launched out of there before the ash hit us, we got all the of them out except for one which was an SR-71 that we hangered until we could get the ash cleaned up. It was pretty ominous watching that stuff fall like snow and we spent that next week clearing the airfield of it. We would work in 3 hour shifts with enough crews to work around the clock and it rained that week which made the cleanup even tougher but we got it done.
