Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire This day in 1980..

I was in Spokane finishing my EMT course with a required day working in a hospital emergency room at Deaconess Hospital. We were busy with ER cases when I heard some people talking about the eruption. We finally got a break at 3 PM and I stepped outside to see what the fuss was about. It was black outside with the street lights on and ash falling through the light of the lamps. We finally were done at 11 PM and I had a morning shift at 8 AM the next day at WSU Fire Department in Pullman. We headed south out of Spokane and got as far as Rosalia before a Washington State Patrol Officer stopped us and told us that the roads were closed and to go the Rosalia High School Gym where we could sleep on the wrestling mats. We got about 4 hours of rest before light. I got up and looked out the window. It was clear and sunny and the ash had settled enough for good visibility. I woke up my buddy and we headed for Pullman on a back road to avoid the billowing dust clouds that would kick up from any passing vehicle. I made it to work on time but it was a long day.

We spent the next week using fire engines and fire hose washing the ash off the streets and roof tops of the campus. It was a hot week and Pullman ran out of beer by Wednesday.

I went there with the DOE/EG&G Aerial Measurements Group a few hours post eruption. Unbelievable devastation and a real gut check on the force of Mother Nature. The data acquired debunked the "scientific theory of Nuclear Winter"


mike r

I was thirty miles away in Sunnyside. We could see the edge of the cloud but that didn't keep us from being dumped on.
I can still see that big black cloud coming down.

I had to go north through a lot of cement-like dust to cross the river at Wenatchee to go back south to Ellensburg. Following week I went to the west side to avoid the dust and was planning on going back over Snoqualamie Pass. Mountain burped a bunch of ash and I had to go back to the north again to get back to school.

Lot of wailing and moaning about the impending agricultural disaster. Within a few months ash was hard to find and the crops were incredible...

Sun was partially blocked and we had ash in Utah.

Forty years ago today, my younger brother @20 years old had been dead for a week, and buried for about three days. Dad had fallen and broken a hip trying to locate the burial plot in a very rural cemetary, in the middle of an apple orchard, in the dark.

And I had come home from my Uncle's ranch to help with chores on Mom and Dad's farm and to care for the three little siblings aged 12, 10, and 9.

I remember clearly thinking about how Brother had missed all the commotion of the eruption. He wrapped the drivers door of a 71 Torino around a power pole at 11:30 PM of Mother's Day on his way to work graveyard shift milking cows at a large dairy, apparently asleep at the wheel.

So each year we get a bit of a reminder.

And we even got a little ash down here in the Boise Valley.

Was on a week long fishing and camping trip in the BWCA just south of Canadian border. I remember the ash in the sky and the weird sunsets and sunrises. Found out what happened after we left and got to a gas station to get ice for fish on drive home. Does not seem like 40 years ago.

Merely an occasional acquaintance for me. Met him through a friend who was a volcanology grad student at the UAF GI. David and my friend Doug were best friends from college days. David was best man at his wedding. A couple of very smart, fun guys.

Dave Johnston

I need to get myself a few cool stories together like....December 1st 1955, I was sitting on a bus in Montgomery Alabama....

Y'all just jealous 'cause the only thing y'all have exciting is some Tropical Storms and maybe the occasional tornado........

Not cool scheidt like we have out here in the West, like 6.9 earthquakes and volcanoes, and million acre wildfires, and 7 year droughts......................


and juniper firewood!

I remember my cousin Tammy being on top of me around that time...

I was stationed at Madigan AMC during 77 and 78 at Ft Lewis...

a group of us use to go out on the weekends in the summer and hike up in the mountains...
one of the easy climbs was Mt St. Helen's....had been up on St Helen's probably half dozen times..

Hard to think two years later, the top 1300 feet on the mountain top blew up and off the rest of the mountain..

Think it was 85 or 86went back out to Washington, went down to St Helen's to see what was still see-able..

Saw lots of vehicles that had been fried to a crisp...on top of all the forest carnage..

I remember that old Character who didn't want to leave.. hard to forget his name, being the same as one of the Presidents...
Sad to think what it must have been like for him, when the mountain killed him...

Amazing, blew the top off the SOB

I remember billowing dust clouds behind every car.

We went to Rosauers to get groceries the day of and all the college students were stocking up on beer for their volcano parties. I'm surprised it lasted until Wednesday.