We asked readers of The Columbian and Columbian.com to share their stories of May 18, 1980. As of last week, we had posted nearly 50 stories on our special website marking the 30th anniversary of the eruption: http://www.columbian.com/volcano. Here is a sampling of their stories.
‘How would they get home?’
By Dorothy Crowell
May 18 is my birthday, and in 1980 I was the program chairman for the Northwest Recovery Room Nurses Association’s fourth annual seminar in Portland.
Since Mount St. Helens was only 50 miles to the north, we chose a small illustration of the mountain for the cover of our program.
When the telephone rang, I could not believe the words I heard: “There has been a major eruption of Mount St. Helens! Ash and debris has been blown 30,000 feet in the air! The I-5 freeway is closed northbound … major flooding is feared!”
How would nurses and doctors at the seminar get home?
The keynote speaker was Dr. Frank McKechnie of Winter Park, Fla. As we rushed him to the airport, I wondered if his flight would leave on time and what view he might have from the air.
Nurses scattered — some to phones, others to their automobiles, others to the airport. No one thought of not reaching home by nightfall.
My husband and I left for home soon after the seminar adjourned at noon. We drove to a view area near our home. We watched with wonderment the monstrous black billowing clouds of ash rushing skyward. The magnitude of the eruption, the destruction in its path, was beyond comprehension!
The remainder of the day was spent glued to the TV in between my birthday dinner, ice cream and cake. I was safe, but I wondered what had happened to everyone after the seminar.
Telephone calls on Monday revealed that my sister and her family in Anaconda, Mont., were covered with volcanic ash, and our hometown had come to a standstill. Tuesday, I learned that the Spokane group was stranded in Portland. Several nurses from Tacoma reported it had taken eight hours to drive home via the coastal route.
The Spokane group did not arrive home until Thursday. Nurses from Billings, Mont., returned on schedule by avoiding Spokane, going to Missoula, Great Falls, and on to Billings ahead of the cloud of ash.
The Sunday holocaust will forever remain in my mind and the minds many, including 182 recovery room nurses who were in Portland on May 18, 1980: The Day the Mountain Blew!
Watching history from the deck
By Ed Hinkle
My wife, Elsie, and I had a home on Silver Lake with a view of Mount St. Helens from our deck.
On May 18, 1980, I was videotaping the lake and mountain as I often did after the first awakening on March 27.
I was about to stop, when I noticed the beginning of the eruption, and I captured the first 1½ hours of the eruption.
The copyrighted tape “Backyard Volcano” has been seen on major TV networks and featured in the film at Seaquest State Park Interpretative Center.
The eruption and the ensuing activity are still a vivid memory even after 30 years.
We were evacuated from our home for six weeks and spent many days after that cleaning the ash that rained down on our house, decks and driveway.
Racing roadblocks for film
By Owen and Linda Mason
My husband and I and our 1-year-old son were camping on our recreational property near Cougar.
My husband woke seconds after the eruption, though he heard no noise from the blast. As he ventured outside our camp trailer, he heard faint rumbling sounds. He couldn’t figure out where they were coming from until he looked up. He saw strange billowing clouds and within the clouds he observed tiny bolts of lightning. Those sounds were from the faint thunder caused by the lightning.
He ran back into the trailer, grabbed our son and told me to get in our pickup truck because the mountain had blown. We headed down to Yale Lake Park, about a mile west of Cougar, to get a better look at the mountain. The view was simply awesome! After a while, we and some friends drove back to Cougar. At the Lone Fir Resort, a bunch of guys tossing their belongings from a large trailer had panic on their faces and their eyes seemed as large as silver dollars. They were part of a tree-planting crew that had been on the mountain that morning and they were getting out of town as quickly as possible.
Winds had begun moving the billowing ash cloud to the east. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we decided to find a spot closer to the mountain. Authorities had begun placing roadblocks on most roads leading to the mountain. But a friend of ours, who had grown up near Cougar, knew of an old logging road. So, we made a beer run to the local store, gathered some food, and headed to a ridgetop known as Cinnamon Peak. We had an incredible view of the mountain, which was probably only about five to six miles away.
My husband took his camera, but after three pictures, he was out of film. As we had our picnic and observed the awesome spectacle, my husband and a couple of guys jumped into a truck and drove back to Cougar to buy film. As luck would have it, the local store was still open. Things were getting a little dicey on Cinnamon Peak. The ground was beginning to shake and we were getting a bit nervous. So, while my husband was quickly taking additional photos, I used the empty film containers to gather ash. With the film exhausted, we agreed we needed to get back to Cougar.
Although we enjoyed our day, we had no idea of the death and destruction that had unfolded on the other side of the mountain. It always strikes me how lucky we were that the mountain erupted in the opposite direction from Cougar and how stupid we were to seek a closer view of a very dangerous mountain that day. But we were much younger back then and had that sense of immortality that goes with being young.
We will never forget that day and are reminded of it often through my husband’s photos. Demand for those photos resulted in our selling the negatives to Sandy’s Photo in Portland. It’s likely that those photos are in many Portland homes.
