I had 7 more years before I was even thought of.
Where were you when the mountain blew...Mt.St. Helens???
- Thread starter ToddC
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ToddC
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You young wipper snappers.......
I had to walk backwards, uphill both ways, barefoot, just to go to school.
what no snow or rain? you had it easy.
We moved to Portland from SoCal a few months earlier. Stayed with the brother-in law, got a job, then rented a house. Looked for our starter home, found it, barely qualifying. We then closed escrow. Wife, baby daughter, small poodle started moving boxes and furniture by ourselves from our rental house to our future home on the morning it blew up. That morning carrying boxes, looking over our shoulders at the rising cloud, I wondered what I had gotten us into.
I was at my parent's house in Burien. I took a Geology of the Pacific Northwest class at UW the year before where they tried to explain lahars and pyroclastic flows. I watched the TV coverage all day and finally understood was they were talking about. The funny thing is that during the class all the attention was on Mt Baker which was emitting some steam clouds. St. Helens wasn't even on the radar then.
At my brothers wedding in Black Diamond, Alberta. Hundreds of miles away and still dust every where.
My wife and I were either in western Montana or central Idaho fishing. No TV or radio, no news. We thought we were in a Lubbock dust storm. We had no clue it was volcanic ash, time we found out what it was, the damage was done. We started downhill toward central Texas. Our last night on the road was spent in Fort Stockton, Tx., about 400 miles from the house. The engine was a custom built 429 which once made about 590 horses. It was so badly scored our top speed was 50 MPH and it took about 3 miles to reach it. Ever 20 or so miles we had to stop and pour 4 quarts of oil in, 17 hour trip. That's where we were they day the mountain blew up.
Paawpabear
Ken Morse
I was a senior at the University of Oklahoma & married for a little over a year. I don't remember anything special about that day, but visited there about ten years ago & was in awe at the amount off devastation. The ability of nature to heal the landscape to the level that it had at that time was amazing. Just an example of the power of God to heal our land.
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ToddC
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OK, now it is 3 days after the Mt blew. My father owned a maching shop in Moses Lake and we are in the hardest hit area of Ash. (see earlier posts). Still no food in the stores, I-90 still closed 30 miles each way from Moses Lake.
The City of Moses Lake has told everyone they have 7 days to get all the Ash off your property and into the streets.
So, my father keeps all 8 employees on the payroll the whole time. We all get together each morning at one of the employees houses. We found that you can not shovel the ash, it just runs off the side of the snow shovel like water it is so liquid in it's nature. Very fine particles that will not bind without water. So, we build push blades out of plywood and 2x4s. Kinda looks like a man powered bulldozer.
We start on the roofs and push it to the yards. Then we scrape and push it from the yards into the streets. This takes a really long time. It is sunny and hot, we are all wearing complete coverage because no one knows what this ash will do to your skin or lungs. Everyone is suppose to wear a face mask to keep it out of our lungs. The masks would clog, I think my fathers mask spent more time on his forehead than on this face. Each day the local radio station would give different reports on what the ash was and how toxic it may be. Fun stuff to hear.......
So, for five days we push and shove this light talcum powder stuff into the streets. Each employee got their house done, then we did our own home. If was tougher because we had a flat roof and no gravity to help.
About 8 days after the mountain blew we had an incredible rain and lightening storm. All the sewers were clogged by the ash, the rain had no where to go. Flooded the Machine Shop with 2' of muddy water. We scrabbled to get everything off the floor and up onto benchs or shelves. Great, now another cleanup job.
The cool part was all the ash in the air made for some really incredible lightening. I saw green, purple and orange lightining. I have never seen it since.
We are still walking everywhere and will continue to do so for the next 10 weeks. Dad had stuck all the cars in the buildings just before the ash started to fall on the Sunday morning. The only car we drove when we did break them out of storage was Mom's
'72 ford Station wagon. Kept the other cars in storage for another 2 months till all the dust quit blowing around each day. there was lots of dead cars aroung town. And a huge glut of used cars for sale afterwards.
You can still find Mt.St.Helens Ash on the side of the road many places near Moses Lake. They buried the sides of I-90 with new shoulder gravel instead of picking it up.
Man am I glad that was a one time deal for me.
ToddC
The City of Moses Lake has told everyone they have 7 days to get all the Ash off your property and into the streets.
So, my father keeps all 8 employees on the payroll the whole time. We all get together each morning at one of the employees houses. We found that you can not shovel the ash, it just runs off the side of the snow shovel like water it is so liquid in it's nature. Very fine particles that will not bind without water. So, we build push blades out of plywood and 2x4s. Kinda looks like a man powered bulldozer.
We start on the roofs and push it to the yards. Then we scrape and push it from the yards into the streets. This takes a really long time. It is sunny and hot, we are all wearing complete coverage because no one knows what this ash will do to your skin or lungs. Everyone is suppose to wear a face mask to keep it out of our lungs. The masks would clog, I think my fathers mask spent more time on his forehead than on this face. Each day the local radio station would give different reports on what the ash was and how toxic it may be. Fun stuff to hear.......
So, for five days we push and shove this light talcum powder stuff into the streets. Each employee got their house done, then we did our own home. If was tougher because we had a flat roof and no gravity to help.
About 8 days after the mountain blew we had an incredible rain and lightening storm. All the sewers were clogged by the ash, the rain had no where to go. Flooded the Machine Shop with 2' of muddy water. We scrabbled to get everything off the floor and up onto benchs or shelves. Great, now another cleanup job.
The cool part was all the ash in the air made for some really incredible lightening. I saw green, purple and orange lightining. I have never seen it since.
We are still walking everywhere and will continue to do so for the next 10 weeks. Dad had stuck all the cars in the buildings just before the ash started to fall on the Sunday morning. The only car we drove when we did break them out of storage was Mom's
'72 ford Station wagon. Kept the other cars in storage for another 2 months till all the dust quit blowing around each day. there was lots of dead cars aroung town. And a huge glut of used cars for sale afterwards.
You can still find Mt.St.Helens Ash on the side of the road many places near Moses Lake. They buried the sides of I-90 with new shoulder gravel instead of picking it up.
Man am I glad that was a one time deal for me.
ToddC
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ToddC
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So, I thought I would wrap this up with a final post.
One thing we did after all the employees homes and yards were cleared of volcanic ash was to look around and find those who had no one to help clean off their property. Three doors up was an elderly couple in their 80's who were trying to rinse it off with a garden hose. We caught them in time to keep the job from becoming a tough one to a terrible one. Have you ever measured how much water volcanic ash can absorbe ???? We cleaned off three or four more homes before all the homes in the area were clear.
This leads me to the Karma part of this post. Three weeks after the ash fell and most of the bulk had been collected and moved from properties, there was still the problem of the wind and loose ash everywhere blowing around. Then had banned all off road motor vehicle movement anywhere to keep the dust down. But all the empty lots were still full of the stuff.
One of my fathers better customers showed up one afternoon and walked in the front door of the Machine Shop and said.....OK Your turn....where do you want it?
My father said " what are you talkin about?"
Lloyd said," I have gravel for your whole property, are you ready?
We started moving what equipment we had still out side, and made room for his huge belly dump gravel spreader to move about the whole property. They came load after load till the whole property was covered with brand new 5/8s minus gravel.
That is at that moment you realize that, what goes around, comes around.......
Practice the golden rule
T
One thing we did after all the employees homes and yards were cleared of volcanic ash was to look around and find those who had no one to help clean off their property. Three doors up was an elderly couple in their 80's who were trying to rinse it off with a garden hose. We caught them in time to keep the job from becoming a tough one to a terrible one. Have you ever measured how much water volcanic ash can absorbe ???? We cleaned off three or four more homes before all the homes in the area were clear.
This leads me to the Karma part of this post. Three weeks after the ash fell and most of the bulk had been collected and moved from properties, there was still the problem of the wind and loose ash everywhere blowing around. Then had banned all off road motor vehicle movement anywhere to keep the dust down. But all the empty lots were still full of the stuff.
One of my fathers better customers showed up one afternoon and walked in the front door of the Machine Shop and said.....OK Your turn....where do you want it?
My father said " what are you talkin about?"
Lloyd said," I have gravel for your whole property, are you ready?
We started moving what equipment we had still out side, and made room for his huge belly dump gravel spreader to move about the whole property. They came load after load till the whole property was covered with brand new 5/8s minus gravel.
That is at that moment you realize that, what goes around, comes around.......
Practice the golden rule
T
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Todd, thank you for sharing... I knew/know nothing of the eruption (other than it had erupted) prior to reading this thread. Now I can't wait to Google it and maybe even find a documentary to watch.
BTW, in 1980 I was living in Arlington (Dallas), Texas and was 4 1/2 years old.
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ToddC
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That ash you have there was some of the stuff that blew at a different time. There were many ash releases and some blew south to the Portlandia area. That stuff was much more coarse since it was closer to the mountain.
I visited Yakima about 8 weeks after the explosion and what we noticed was how coarse the ash was there, and it was much easier to deal with, kinda more like sand than powder. What we got was much lighter and flew through the air longer since it was lighter. Just like talcum powder....
We finally got food and supplies at day 5. Good thing Mom had about a months worth of food stuffs in the house.
ToddC
I visited Yakima about 8 weeks after the explosion and what we noticed was how coarse the ash was there, and it was much easier to deal with, kinda more like sand than powder. What we got was much lighter and flew through the air longer since it was lighter. Just like talcum powder....
We finally got food and supplies at day 5. Good thing Mom had about a months worth of food stuffs in the house.
ToddC
A few years after the blast, some friends and I climbed St. Helens. Standing on the south rim and looking into the crater, it was jaw-dropping how much material was missing. Back then the lava dome building in the crater was still described as "the size of the Kingdome". :-D
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ToddC
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OK, so now it is two weeks after the Mt. Blew it's top and buried us in talcum power like Ash.
School is officially closed and done for the year....three weeks early. No finals, no last tests. Best of all no studing for those tests. As a junior in High School is was great....except for the ash. Our final grades are what they were when the Mt. Blew. I did OK, I think it was a 3.7 gpa or so.
We still are not driving a car. Luckily my father's business was only about 1.5 miles away and walking wasn't that bad, unless the wind or a slight breaze was blowing. Then it was full face gear, bandanas, dust masks, front of your T-shirt, what ever you had or carried for such an event. Going grocery shopping and carrying it all home was another story.......dusty food no matter what.
It was getting to be normal to look like a very dusty farm worker...all the time. Best part of the day was the shower before bed........
Most of the ash has been collected from the streets, but all the storm drains are plugged with the stuff. It takes the city the next two months to clean out the pipes.
There is a manditory speed limit of less than 25mph for those who find it nessesary to drive. And the police are inforcing it...too much dust. Anyone who drove their car in the stuff, soon found out that it killed everything that moved. The ash was like sandpaper to all moving parts. Drive lines, steering knuckles, door hinges, speedo drives, window cranks, heater fans, and all the engine parts and pieces. Locals would not buy a used car from the area for years for fear of it being an "Ash Car".
Just thought some of you might like to know.....
Todd
School is officially closed and done for the year....three weeks early. No finals, no last tests. Best of all no studing for those tests. As a junior in High School is was great....except for the ash. Our final grades are what they were when the Mt. Blew. I did OK, I think it was a 3.7 gpa or so.
We still are not driving a car. Luckily my father's business was only about 1.5 miles away and walking wasn't that bad, unless the wind or a slight breaze was blowing. Then it was full face gear, bandanas, dust masks, front of your T-shirt, what ever you had or carried for such an event. Going grocery shopping and carrying it all home was another story.......dusty food no matter what.
It was getting to be normal to look like a very dusty farm worker...all the time. Best part of the day was the shower before bed........
Most of the ash has been collected from the streets, but all the storm drains are plugged with the stuff. It takes the city the next two months to clean out the pipes.
There is a manditory speed limit of less than 25mph for those who find it nessesary to drive. And the police are inforcing it...too much dust. Anyone who drove their car in the stuff, soon found out that it killed everything that moved. The ash was like sandpaper to all moving parts. Drive lines, steering knuckles, door hinges, speedo drives, window cranks, heater fans, and all the engine parts and pieces. Locals would not buy a used car from the area for years for fear of it being an "Ash Car".
Just thought some of you might like to know.....
Todd
Thanks for the stories Todd... they really are very interesting. Makes the event more 'real' so to speak to those of us that only heard about it on the news.
Hopefully 90 days isn't lame for responding to a thread you just found... 
Back in the day I was teaching skiing on the weekends up at the pass. We all agreed to meet in Leavenworth on - wait for it - May 18th to take a raft trip with Zig Zag Outfitters down the Wenatchee. Around 10am when we were putting in, we heard a couple of "booms", which were passed off as being stump blowing or mining related. Not unusual for that area back then. There were the "well, maybe Mt. St. Helens blew" comments because of mild activity in the prior weeks, but nobody took it seriously.
After lunch, as we started towards Cashmere, we could see a grey cloud from the SSW. No one really quite got it until that cloud - which we though might be rain - overtook us and started to drop fine ash on the sides of the rafts and those with contacts started having real problems. At the pullout the pickup driver told us what had happened, that Snoqualmie Pass was closed, and we wound up going over Stevens Pass just to get to back to Maple Valley.
Here's the kicker. We didn't know it at the time, but my wife of two years was pregnant with our first, and she lost her diamond out of her wedding ring on the trip. Good news was our son turned out great and since the "rock" was really a "chip" I had to buy a new ring later anyways. Next month its 38 years. Oh boy where does the time go?
It goes on a long ride on an ST.
Back in the day I was teaching skiing on the weekends up at the pass. We all agreed to meet in Leavenworth on - wait for it - May 18th to take a raft trip with Zig Zag Outfitters down the Wenatchee. Around 10am when we were putting in, we heard a couple of "booms", which were passed off as being stump blowing or mining related. Not unusual for that area back then. There were the "well, maybe Mt. St. Helens blew" comments because of mild activity in the prior weeks, but nobody took it seriously.
After lunch, as we started towards Cashmere, we could see a grey cloud from the SSW. No one really quite got it until that cloud - which we though might be rain - overtook us and started to drop fine ash on the sides of the rafts and those with contacts started having real problems. At the pullout the pickup driver told us what had happened, that Snoqualmie Pass was closed, and we wound up going over Stevens Pass just to get to back to Maple Valley.
Here's the kicker. We didn't know it at the time, but my wife of two years was pregnant with our first, and she lost her diamond out of her wedding ring on the trip. Good news was our son turned out great and since the "rock" was really a "chip" I had to buy a new ring later anyways. Next month its 38 years. Oh boy where does the time go?
It goes on a long ride on an ST.
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ToddC
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Another entry.......
I found a jar of the ash that fell on us that day, while the wife and I were prepping the house for sale this last week. Also found a pic of the ash falling before it hit the ground and blacked out the sun. Sorry it is a pic of pic.
If you click on the pic you can see how fine the particles are and how poofy the ash looked as it fell through the sun!
. 
I will post again on May 18th about what it was like one year later....
ToddC
I found a jar of the ash that fell on us that day, while the wife and I were prepping the house for sale this last week. Also found a pic of the ash falling before it hit the ground and blacked out the sun. Sorry it is a pic of pic.
If you click on the pic you can see how fine the particles are and how poofy the ash looked as it fell through the sun!
. I will post again on May 18th about what it was like one year later....
ToddC
Wow, that 2nd pic looks like something out of a disaster movie!
I remember I was watching the news and feeling pain for those that had to endure all that ash. I couldn't imagine going through that, and the hardship that took over all that time. I've always wanted to ride there, looks like my chance is coming up this summer. I was close back in 2007 but we didn't have the time.......
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ToddC
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Dude....it was a disaster movie.........in real life! When it started falling on us ....no one knew what to do. It was 1980.......there was no FEMA in Moses Lake. No one would ever think this kinda thing could happen. The whole town collapsed! The local radio station turned into a clearing house for missing or lost people. At 11pm we went to bed with ash still falling. We seriously didn't know what was going to happen the next day........
T
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