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Mt. St. Helens - May 18, 1980
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May 19, 2019 16:17:47   #
Beard43 Loc: End of the Oregon Trail
 
My wife and I were sleeping when our two boys came running in and told us " the mountain just blew up". We were living in NE Portland at the time. I still have several samples of ash from various eruptions.
Ron

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May 19, 2019 16:34:48   #
autofocus Loc: North Central Connecticut
 
philmurfin wrote:
They are great shots showing some incredible damage. It's strange, I don't remember anything about it?
Thanks
Phil


thank you Phil, it was really something to see in person, even from that distance!

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May 19, 2019 20:45:42   #
ab7rn Loc: Portland, Oregon
 
At the time of that eruption I was on a sailboat off the east coast. I looked at the moon, and said to my wife, "Something big has happened". The moon was a bright orange. Later we sailed into Chincotegue and learned that St Helens had erupted.

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May 19, 2019 23:07:36   #
scooter1 Loc: Yacolt, Wa.
 
Now My house is appx 25 flying miles from the crater but at the time I was an air traffic controller in Seattle center and our sector controlled traffic over Mt St. Helens. It was a restricted area where you must have special permission to enter. I wake up every day to see it. Beautiful!


(Download)

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May 20, 2019 01:25:31   #
KenW Loc: Portland OR
 
jerryc41 wrote:
It's hard to believe it was almost forty years ago that Mt. St. Helens erupted. That area has made quite a comeback since then.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mt+st+helens+today&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS716US717&oq=mt+st+helens+today&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4615j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8


The wife and I had just gotten up when we heard that Mt. St. Helens was erupting. I went outside and sure enough I could see the mountain erupting with it's huge plume of ash going miles into the air. it was really cool to see the eruption not realizing the staggering amount of damage and loss of life occuring at that very moment. Got to see the carnage done by the eruptions soon afterwards, and the area down from where the main eruption occured, looked as if an atomic bomb had been dropped there. We stopped at what was once a camping area to look at what remained of an automobile. all the glass was gone, the cloth interior burned out, the plastic dash had melted and drooped down to the seat frame. The tires had burned away, so the car was setting on its rims. What I found most interesting was all the paint was gone, literally sand blasted away by the volcanic ash, the car polished to a high metallic shine. At the end of the road we were able to see the edge of the crater, as we were about four miles away. but were not allowed any further by the forest service. A few years later the car was a rusting hulk with a fence around it to keep the public from stripping it any futher for souvenirs, and the end of the road overlooking the craters edge had a mobile food wagon on it. My third trip about 20 years ago found things had changed and the Johnson Ridge Observatory had been built near the end of the road and had been open for six years. I havn't been back since, maybe I'm due.

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May 20, 2019 01:45:30   #
eugenelouie
 
jerryc41 wrote:
It's hard to believe it was almost forty years ago that Mt. St. Helens erupted. That area has made quite a comeback since then.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mt+st+helens+today&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS716US717&oq=mt+st+helens+today&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4615j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8


Jerry,
I was on staff of Longview, WA Daily News and we won the Pulitzer Prize for our coverage of the eruption and aftermath. I fondly remember my time photographing the people and mountain. Where were you on May 18th ? Eugene Louie


(Download)

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May 20, 2019 01:49:05   #
eugenelouie
 
What a tremendous story I wonder if we met or if you knew any of the staff of The Longview Daily News? My god what town did you live it sounds like your family was in danger ?

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May 20, 2019 02:23:37   #
KenW Loc: Portland OR
 
eugenelouie wrote:
What a tremendous story I wonder if we met or if you knew any of the staff of The Longview Daily News? My god what town did you live it sounds like your family was in danger ?


We live in SE Portland and can see Mt Hood from my front door and Mt St. Helens by walking three blocks.

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May 20, 2019 15:50:02   #
sgt hop Loc: baltimore md,now in salisbury md
 
i have a little film container with some of the ash from that thing.....

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May 20, 2019 19:29:08   #
KenW Loc: Portland OR
 
I knowI l have a vile of Mt St. Helen's ash as well. I remember after we got a dusting from St. Helen's that the city said they would help with our water bills as we washed the ash down into the stormdrains and sanitary system. After the cleanup the city changed their mind and decided we would not get a break on our water bills. They liked the exter revenue generated from all the extra water used to clean the ash off of everything.

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May 27, 2019 21:47:29   #
sjb3
 
I was about 8 years into my Army career, stationed at Fort Lewis Washington (3rd Squadron, 5th Cav) when Mount St. Helens erupted, the initial explosion of which caused something like 1300 feet of the whole North face to blast straight out; the Toutle River actually boiled for a short time. 92-year-old Harry Truman refused to leave the lodge he owned and operated for 52 years on Spirit Lake at the foot of the volcano; when the mountain blew, Spirit Lake and Mr. Truman's lodge were buried under 150 feet of volcanic landslide debris carried by the fast-moving pyroclastic flow in less than a minute. I myself was on board a Huey less than 3 days later en route to Yakima Firing Center and saw first-hand some of the devastation. What will always stick in my mind was how the land, being covered in dead grey ash as far as the eye could see (even from our already high-up position) looked like the surface of the Moon, though what made even more of an impression was also seeing what looked like grass clippings after you'd mow the lawn (only grey!) and knowing they were old-growth trees more than 50 feet tall with some too big to get your arms around, literally mowed down in their thousands by one colossal blast.

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Jun 5, 2019 10:20:28   #
DickC Loc: NE Washington state
 
Yep, I was living in Colorado then and remember having dust/ash all over our cars for several days afterward, and we were 4 or 5 hundred miles away!!

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