It Was Thirty Years Ago Today

[filkertom]

... that Mount St. Helens blew its top.

ladystarblade points us to one of several very good archival sites about the eruption.

Comments

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Yo Mount St. Helens, I'm really happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but Eyjafjallajökull had one of the best eruptions of all time

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

Okay, I almost did a spittake there. You win. :-)

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

I was at Dodger Stadium, enjoying a birthday baseball game. Apparently the stadium management didn't think the eruption was newsworthy enough to announce it during the game, because we didn't hear about it until we got back in the car and turned on the radio.

Oh, the Dodgers won, by the way...

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

There's a bunch of stuff in our paper and on our news of people remembering it; the ash cloud came this far East.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

I was at work in Spokane when it blew. Massive ash cloud made it almost as dark as night, and the ash fell like a blizzard. Ahhh, good times, good times.

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

I lived in Portland, Oregon at the time. Four days later, I would turn five years old. I vaguely remember there being face masks in my house. I might or might not have been forbidden to play outside for a time; I had discovered books by then and would not have been terribly put out by "house arrest".

What I remember more is sitting on the sidewalk for a local parade in early June, and doodling with my fingers in the ash that had drifted where the sidewalk meets the street.

[mythdude.livejournal.com]

Look, I know Helen got a little mad 30 years ago but it's just tacky pointing out she lost her head arguing with Elmo over that fire. :P

Cause she blew her top? Like an argument? Heh heh...

My baby nephew liked it. :/

[ladycheron.livejournal.com]

Here's before-and-today pix: http://epod.usra.edu/

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why this event still fascinates me so much...I was a few months shy of being conceived at that time...maybe it was the amazing pictorial National Geographic did on it (I collected NGs for a nickel apiece), maybe it was the bar of Mt. St. Helens Ash Soap that my grandma had, I dunno. But it's still a fascination.

[ldyerzsie.livejournal.com]

My Grandmother lived in Seatle at the time of the eruption. She was in an apartment were she had a view of Mount Renier (sp?) at the time--my paerents have pics of the view. She actually got some ash from her balcony and kept it in a jar. I thought it was just way cool.

[cathain.livejournal.com]

I have lived off and on in the Portland area since I became a young adult. I was not in Portland at the time Mt. St. Helens blew because I had come back to Kansas to stay with family. I had a toddler and a preschooler at the time and , simply put, my husband actually felt it was safer for us to be there. My husband sent us a comical photo of himself standing under the Ash St. street sign wearing a mask. At one time I had several pieces of glass made with Mount St. Helens ash. It creates the most beautiful rainbow colors that shimmer like Fostoria carnival glass.
It was heartbreaking when I returned and saw how much the skyline had changed. Even more heartbreaking was when they started opening up the Castle Rock Highway and creating the first (of three) visitor centers up the mountain. There was an audio recording that you could listen to of the vulcanologist who was up by the crater that day. It was very chilling to hear his last words and then the sudden static.
I also almost lost a good friend in the blast. She was a camera tech for KATU TV in Portland and had been tapped to go up in the helicopter that morning. They had literally just taken off to go up to circle the crater, like they had been doing for several weeks, when the mountain blew up. It was only by some very fancy footwork of the pilot that they were able to survive. Had they been up by the crater they wouldn't have.