Mt St. Helens-May 17, 2020

SPECIAL SECTION

S U N D AY, M AY 1 7 , 2 0 2 0

40 years later

QUIET IS A FACADE AT ST. HELENS

ST. HELENS: A FURTHER REVIEW

MOUNTAIN HAS POWER TO HUMBLE

Life finds a way at Mount St. Helens 40 years after the big eruption.

Below the surface, however, activity keeps scientists on guard. PAGE 3

Spokesman-Review graphic artist and journalist Charles Apple takes a look at the anatomy of an eruption.

PAGES 6-7

Climbing Mount St. Helens has been a popular activity during this quieter period. The trek still can offer powerful lessons. PAGE 9

- T

2

Main

SPECIAL 2

l

SUNDAY

l

MAY 17, 2020

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

- T

3

Main

Sunday, May 17, 2020  Page 3

A dramatic alteration of Mount St. Helens occurred on May 18, 1980, but 40 years later, the volcano’s story above and below the surface is still being written Story by Nicholas Deshais FOR THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Opposite page: Life has slowly but surely returned to Mount St. Helens, pictured in May 2019.

Below: In this photo provided by the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory, Mount St. Helens is shown on May 17, 1980, the day before its massive eruption that killed more than 50 people and blasted more than 1,300 feet off the mountain's peak.

The black-and-white images of the 16-mile high stanchion of ash give a false impression.

The photos of Mount St. Helens’ eruption taken on May 18, 1980, suggest a cataclysm that remains in the past, safely ensconced in history and available for warm recollection of when the world exploded and we survived.

But that’s wrong.

Look no further than the abiding pocket gopher – or the chocked Spirit Lake and road builders of the Pumice Plain – to know the continuing effects of the eruption 40 years later.

At the time, the gophers survived the devastation by hiding in their burrows deep under the snow and dirt. Just a few days after the eruption, their mounds could be seen on the mountain by researchers flying overhead in helicopters. This key species helped others return, and still lives up there, high above the tree line.

Spirit Lake was and remains clogged with the trees blown down by the eruption decades ago. A tunnel built after the eruption to help drain the lake is now in need of repair. Government engineers have proposed building a new tunnel and corresponding road through the Pumice Plain, “one of the most closely studied patches of land in the world,” according to a recent article in High Country News. Volcano scientists and conservationists are fighting the proposal.

This story was done in collaboration with Spokane Public Radio, Northwest Public Broadcasting and the Northwest News Network. A radio report based on this report is attached to this story at spokesman.com. It also can be heard on your local public radio station.

Nicholas Deshais can be reached at ndeshais@kpbx.org.

See CHANGE, 4

PHOTO ON OPPOSITE PAGE COURTESY OF CRAIG GOODWIN

ALSO TODAY: An interview with writer Eric Wagner, whose book “After the Blast” revisits the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

PAGE 21

Main

SPECIAL 4

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

Mount St. Helens shown in various stages of eruption on the morning of May 18, 1980. The mountain has continued to be active since that fateful day.

THE MOST ACTIVE VOLCANO

ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS

On Oct. 1, 2004, Mount St. Helens shoots a plume of steam and ash high into the air after days of rumblings under the mountain.

CHANGE Continued from 3 In other words, Mount St. Helens’ story didn’t end when the ash settled and the landslides ground to a halt. It’s still going on today.

“The geology story played out pretty quickly,” said Fred Swanson, an earth scientist who has studied the mountain before and after the eruption. “The hydrology and erosion and sedimentation issues persist to this day.”

Eric Wagner is a science writer in Seattle who recently published a book about the ecology of Mount St. Helens called “After the Blast” and wrote the High Country News article. In a sense, he said, the eruption never really stopped.

“There’s never, ever a real sense of stability there,” said Wagner in an interview. “That’s the price of living on Earth.”

‘And then it happened’

Seth Moran was a 13-year-old “volcano nerd” in Massachusetts when Mount St. Helens erupted and seized the world’s attention.

He had recently read a book about volcanoes around the world.

The last chapter focused on the

OUR REGION’S SECTION OF THE RING OF FIRE

Mount Baker Erupted mid-1800s

Seattle

Mount St. Helens erupted May 18, 19805

Glacier Peak Erupted at least six times in the past 4,000 years

395

95

Spokane Coeur d’Alene

WA S H I NG T O N 90

Mount Rainier Erupted at least 10 times in the past 4,000 years

N

395

5 0 MIL ES

Mount Adams 82 Series of small eruptions about Richland 1,000 years ago

5

Vancouver

Kettle Falls

84

Portland

84 Hood Mount Last erupted about 200 years ago 97

IDAHO

4

CAS C R A NA D E GE

- T

Lewiston

OREGON

MOLLY QUINN/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Source: USGS

Cascades – the string of mountains stretching from British Columbia to California that are part of the Pacific Ocean’s volcanic Ring of Fire.

The chapter was titled, “Sleeping Giants.”

“It was fascinating,” Moran said.

“There was never any talk of something happening, and then it happened. That really blew my mind.”

The eruption sealed his fate, and Moran got a geology degree in col-

‘‘

lege, before attaining a graduate degree in seismology and a doctorate in geophysics from the University of Washington.

Now, Moran is “scientist-incharge” at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, which was established in Vancouver, Washington, by the U.S. Geological Survey after the Mount St. Helens eruption.

The observatory keeps an eye on all the volcanoes of the West Coast.

Baker, Glacier Peak, Rainier, Hood, Shasta and Lassen have all erupted in the last 200 years. During the past 4,000 years, eruptions of the 11 active volcanoes in the range have come about twice a century on average, according to the USGS. The most active of the group is St. Helens. In fact, there were 20 more eruptions following the big one in 1980 until 1986, leaving behind a new lava dome. Huge clouds of ash burped out of the mountain a few times between 1989 and 1991. And magma reached its surface in 2004, inaugurating another four years of active vulcanism and mountain building.

“The St. Helens of today is, at the surface, dormant. Not really erupting at all,” Moran said. “There’s

See CHANGE, 5

There’s a lot of similarity to the earthquakes we’re seeing today to those that were going on between the two eruptions. We infer there’s once again a recharge going on. It’s not telling us the volcano is going to erupt tomorrow or next week or next month, but it is a sign that the volcano is still alive and well and that we might expect to see an eruption in a time frame of years to decades from now.”

Seth Moran Cascades Volcano Observatory geologist, referring to the 1980 and 2004 eruptions

- T

5

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 5

LEGENDARY JAZZ MUSICIAN TRAPPED IN SPOKANE

BY ST. HELENS ERUPTION

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVE

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was set to play Spokane on May 18, 1980.

The Dizzy Chronicles, Part 1

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

COLIN MULVANY/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Years after the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens, this view of the lava dome from the Johnston Ridge Observatory reveals just how close geologist’s David Johnston’s camp was to the mountain.

CHANGE

hold in the pressure.”

‘Vancouver! Vancouver!

This is it!’

Continued from 4 plenty of activity going on beneath the surface.”

Fifty miles below the mountain, the Earth moves. Though far underground, it’s here where the ocean meets the land. More specifically, where the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate meets the North American continental plate, creating what scientists call a subduction zone. In this case, the Juan de Fuca plate is being jammed underneath the continental plate, creating unimaginable forces and pressure.

Sometimes, what happens below comes to the surface, and molten rock flows. But much of the time, the underground work of tectonic plates is witnessed only by scientists with technical equipment.

Like today, as scientists monitor earthquakes happening 5 miles underfoot.

“There’s a lot of similarity to the earthquakes we’re seeing today to the those that were going on between the two eruptions,” Moran said, referring to the 1980 and 2004 eruptions. “We infer there’s once again a recharge going on. It’s not telling us the volcano is going to erupt tomorrow or next week or next month, but it is a sign that the volcano is still alive and well and that we might expect to see an eruption in a time frame of years to decades from now.”

When it does erupt again – because it will erupt again – Moran says it won’t be like 1980.

“That was cataclysmic and unprecedented in a number of ways,” he said.

Mount St. Helens, clearly, is an explosive volcano. But the 1980 eruption was different because of the accompanying landslide, which instantaneously took the pressure off the intruding magma below.

“It was exactly like taking the lid off of a Coke bottle that you’ve shaken up. It came out in a much more violent way than it otherwise would have,” Moran said. “Today, the volcano is missing a chunk of itself, and it’s missing part of the cap, or the cork, that would be available to

On the morning of May 18, 1980, a 30-year-old volcanologist named David Johnston was staring at the north slope of Mount St. Helens.

Two months earlier, the volcano had signaled its return to life after 123 years of hibernation. Shallow earthquakes were followed by steam explosions and hiccups of ash. The USGS had sent a team to monitor the activity. Johnston was a principal scientist heading up the volcanic gas studies, and was posted at an observation point 6 miles north of the mountain.

The sky was clear that day, and the sun rose at 5:30 a.m. So did Johnston. Out of his camper, Johnston checked the growing bulge of St. Helens with geodetic equipment. The growth had slowed. It was only about 2 feet bigger than a day earlier. At 6:53 a.m., he radioed in his measurement to the USGS office in Vancouver, Washington.

Not two hours later, at 8:32 a.m., a 5.1-magnitude earthquake triggered a landslide on the mountain’s north face. The mountain began spewing steam and gas and, seconds later, it erupted from its north side. Not its peak, but the face Johnston was examining. A dense mass of super hot ash, lava and gas came screaming at Johnston at supersonic speeds. This was soon joined by violent mudflows roaring down the North Fork Toutle River Valley.

Though 6 miles away, Johnston had less than a minute to react. He grabbed his radio: “Vancouver!

Vancouver! This is it!”

Seconds later, his signal went silent.

The eruption was heard hundreds of miles away. Ash rained on Spokane and as far as Nebraska. In its wake, $1 billion in damage was done, and 57 people died. Johnston was the first of them.

Ten days later, Fred Swanson was in a helicopter looking for Johnston’s camp. He was joined by Harry Glicken, another USGS volcanologist who had switched shifts

See CHANGE, 8

‘‘

Today, the volcano is missing a chunk of itself, and it’s missing part of the cap, or the cork, that would be available to hold in the pressure.”

Seth Moran Cascades Volcano Observatory geologist

The legendary jazz trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie came to Spokane in May 1980 to play a gig at the Spokane Opera House (now the First Interstate Center for the Arts) with the Spokane Jazz Orchestra.

That concert on May 18 would be canceled, thanks to Mount St. Helens, and Gillespie would be forced to hang around town for a few days as fallen ash shut down the airport and Interstate 90.

In a story in the next afternoon’s edition of The Spokane Daily Chronicle, Gillespie quipped, “I’m scared.” The reporter noted Gillespie seemed to be taking the delay in stride, writing that

the musician was “sitting in his motel room looking for a backgammon partner. His bags were packed, he said, and is ready to leave the moment air traffic returns.”

Gillespie, famous for playing a bent horn and for his cheeks that pouched when he played, was among the leading lights of bebop, along with Charlie Parker. He also famously once stabbed bandleader Cab Calloway in the leg.

While there is zero indication in the public record that anything remotely violent happened while Gillespie was in town, his stay in the Lilac City would not be uneventful.

See Dizzy Chronicles, Part 2 on Page 9

- T

6

Main

SPECIAL 6

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 7

ERUPTION!

By Charles Apple | THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, all the rumblings, the trembling, the minor earthquakes, the bulges in the mountain and the occasional venting of steam led to an enormous eruption that generated the thermal energy equal to 26 megatons of TNT, hurled ash 15 miles into the air, killed 57 people and caused more than $1 billion in damage.

1

Beginning with a series of minor earthquakes that began on March 20, Mount St. Helens had developed a number of bulges and gas vents, especially on its north face. This led geologists to conclude that an eruption might occur soon.

Scientific observation of Mount St. Helens would be increased over the course of the spring.

This moment was captured in the photo at above left.

2

This moment was captured in the photo at lower left.

3

On the morning of May 18, the dome suddenly collapsed in a 5.1-magnitude earthquake.

This resulted in an enormous landslide on the north side of the mountain.

DOROTHY STOFFEL/COURTESY

4

As the side of the mountain slid away, the hot gasses inside which were under intense pressure blasted northward, creating a fan-shaped path of destruction 15 to 19 miles long.

About a minute into the eruption, much of the mountain top had slid away. The upward blast — now at full strength — would continue for nine hours and would reach 15 miles into the atmosphere.

This moment was captured in the photo at right.

DOROTHY STOFFEL/COURTESY

TOP: Spokane residents Dorothy and Keith Stoffel happened to be flying over Mount St. Helens that morning just as it erupted. At top, a glacier falls away just as the earthquake hits, resulting in the largest landslide in recorded history.

ROGER WERTH/LONGVIEW DAILY NEWS

Bottom: The north side of the mountain erupts with tremendous fury, ripping 1,300 feet . The Stoffels’ pilot put his plane into a nose dive to outrun the explosion and flew to Portland instead of trying to return to the airport in Yakima, from where they had set out.

In less than 10 minutes, the column of superheated ash had risen more than than 12 miles high. Particles of swirling ash generated lightning — which, in turn created forest fires. 540 million tons of ash spewed out of Mount St. Helens that day — about the equivalent of a football field, piled 150 miles high.

This photo is one of a series that would win a Pulitzer Prize for general news photography in 1981.

Why Mount St. Helens erupted

A ‘stone wind’

Airborne ash

The Cascades mountain range — including Mount St. Helens — were formed by two sections of the Earth’s surface running into each other.

The explosion ripped 1,300 feet off the top of Mount St. Helens and moved outward at speeds up to 200 miles per hour.

540 million tons of thick volcanic ash was thrown 15 miles into the air, where winds carried it hundreds of miles away.

WASH.

Mount St. Helens Juan de Fuca plate

GREEN

This pressure and these hot temperatures force molten rock to the surface, creating a chain of volcanoes.

WYO. SPIRIT LAKE

Direct blast zone Channelized blast zone Seared zone

S.D. NEB.

COLO.

KEY:

N.D. MINN.

IDAHO

N TO ORTH UT LE FORK RIV ER

North America plate

Mount St. Helens had erupted several times over the centuries — most notably in 1800 — but had been relatively quiet since 1857.

M O N T. ORE.

SUBDUCTION ZONE

These sections, called tectonic plates, float on a sea of molten lava deep within the Earth. The Juan de Fuca plate is shoved beneath the North America plate creating high pressure and hot temperatures.

RIVER

N.M.

KAN. OKLA.

Crater

150 miles of forest — much of it 180-foottall fir trees — was cut down, uprooted or sawed in half by rocks of all sizes moving at tremendous speeds. Rock, dirt and ash forced the water out of Spirit Lake and the rivers around Mount St. Helens. The silt would clog the Columbia River, about 40 miles or so downstream, reducting navigability from 39 feet to only 13 feet deep.

5 MILES

The material that belched out of the mountain was a superheated 1,000 degrees. Two weeks later, some of the pumice covering the mountain would still measure 780 degrees.

The eruption would continue for about nine hours. Over that time, thick layers of ash were spread across Washington and into Idaho and smaller amounts began to rain down on the northwest and midwest, over an area of more than 22,000 square miles.

The estimated toll for Mount St. Helens eruption:

KEY:

2 to 5 inches ½ to 2 inches Trace to ½ inch

■ 57 dead ■ More than 200 homes and cabins ■ 185 miles of roads ■ 15 miles of railroad ■ More than 4 billion board feet of salable timber ■ Nearly 7,000 big game animals ■ A total of about $1.1 billion in damage

WES CAMERON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Moving at about 60 miles per hour, the cloud of ash reached Yakima by 9:45 am and Spokane by just before noon. The skies darkened. Steetlights would come on and stay on for the rest of the day.

Six inches of ash would fall on Lind — quite a bit more than fell on other communities in the region. Geologixts would later theorize this was caused by fine particles of ash clumping inside a cloud.

Residents would try to hose the ash down the drains — until area drains became clogged.

Shoveling ash proved to be difficult as well: There just wasn’t anywhere to dump it all.

J. BART RAYNIAK/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Sources: The U.S. Geological Survey, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, “1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens” by Jimmy Wai-Leong Tam and Alex Reynolds of Simon Fraser University, “The Eruption of Mount St. Helens” by the editors of Charles River, “Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens” by Patricia Lauber, Washinton State University Insider, LiveScience.com, The Spokesman-Review files

- T

6

Main

SPECIAL 6

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 7

ERUPTION!

By Charles Apple | THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

At 8:32 a.m. on May 18, 1980, all the rumblings, the trembling, the minor earthquakes, the bulges in the mountain and the occasional venting of steam led to an enormous eruption that generated the thermal energy equal to 26 megatons of TNT, hurled ash 15 miles into the air, killed 57 people and caused more than $1 billion in damage.

1

Beginning with a series of minor earthquakes that began on March 20, Mount St. Helens had developed a number of bulges and gas vents, especially on its north face. This led geologists to conclude that an eruption might occur soon.

Scientific observation of Mount St. Helens would be increased over the course of the spring.

This moment was captured in the photo at above left.

2

This moment was captured in the photo at lower left.

3

On the morning of May 18, the dome suddenly collapsed in a 5.1-magnitude earthquake.

This resulted in an enormous landslide on the north side of the mountain.

DOROTHY STOFFEL/COURTESY

4

As the side of the mountain slid away, the hot gasses inside which were under intense pressure blasted northward, creating a fan-shaped path of destruction 15 to 19 miles long.

About a minute into the eruption, much of the mountain top had slid away. The upward blast — now at full strength — would continue for nine hours and would reach 15 miles into the atmosphere.

This moment was captured in the photo at right.

DOROTHY STOFFEL/COURTESY

TOP: Spokane residents Dorothy and Keith Stoffel happened to be flying over Mount St. Helens that morning just as it erupted. At top, a glacier falls away just as the earthquake hits, resulting in the largest landslide in recorded history.

ROGER WERTH/LONGVIEW DAILY NEWS

Bottom: The north side of the mountain erupts with tremendous fury, ripping 1,300 feet . The Stoffels’ pilot put his plane into a nose dive to outrun the explosion and flew to Portland instead of trying to return to the airport in Yakima, from where they had set out.

In less than 10 minutes, the column of superheated ash had risen more than than 12 miles high. Particles of swirling ash generated lightning — which, in turn created forest fires. 540 million tons of ash spewed out of Mount St. Helens that day — about the equivalent of a football field, piled 150 miles high.

This photo is one of a series that would win a Pulitzer Prize for general news photography in 1981.

Why Mount St. Helens erupted

A ‘stone wind’

Airborne ash

The Cascades mountain range — including Mount St. Helens — were formed by two sections of the Earth’s surface running into each other.

The explosion ripped 1,300 feet off the top of Mount St. Helens and moved outward at speeds up to 200 miles per hour.

540 million tons of thick volcanic ash was thrown 15 miles into the air, where winds carried it hundreds of miles away.

WASH.

Mount St. Helens Juan de Fuca plate

GREEN

This pressure and these hot temperatures force molten rock to the surface, creating a chain of volcanoes.

WYO. SPIRIT LAKE

Direct blast zone Channelized blast zone Seared zone

S.D. NEB.

COLO.

KEY:

N.D. MINN.

IDAHO

N TO ORTH UT LE FORK RIV ER

North America plate

Mount St. Helens had erupted several times over the centuries — most notably in 1800 — but had been relatively quiet since 1857.

M O N T. ORE.

SUBDUCTION ZONE

These sections, called tectonic plates, float on a sea of molten lava deep within the Earth. The Juan de Fuca plate is shoved beneath the North America plate creating high pressure and hot temperatures.

RIVER

N.M.

KAN. OKLA.

Crater

150 miles of forest — much of it 180-foottall fir trees — was cut down, uprooted or sawed in half by rocks of all sizes moving at tremendous speeds. Rock, dirt and ash forced the water out of Spirit Lake and the rivers around Mount St. Helens. The silt would clog the Columbia River, about 40 miles or so downstream, reducting navigability from 39 feet to only 13 feet deep.

5 MILES

The material that belched out of the mountain was a superheated 1,000 degrees. Two weeks later, some of the pumice covering the mountain would still measure 780 degrees.

The eruption would continue for about nine hours. Over that time, thick layers of ash were spread across Washington and into Idaho and smaller amounts began to rain down on the northwest and midwest, over an area of more than 22,000 square miles.

The estimated toll for Mount St. Helens eruption:

KEY:

2 to 5 inches ½ to 2 inches Trace to ½ inch

■ 57 dead ■ More than 200 homes and cabins ■ 185 miles of roads ■ 15 miles of railroad ■ More than 4 billion board feet of salable timber ■ Nearly 7,000 big game animals ■ A total of about $1.1 billion in damage

WES CAMERON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Moving at about 60 miles per hour, the cloud of ash reached Yakima by 9:45 am and Spokane by just before noon. The skies darkened. Steetlights would come on and stay on for the rest of the day.

Six inches of ash would fall on Lind — quite a bit more than fell on other communities in the region. Geologixts would later theorize this was caused by fine particles of ash clumping inside a cloud.

Residents would try to hose the ash down the drains — until area drains became clogged.

Shoveling ash proved to be difficult as well: There just wasn’t anywhere to dump it all.

J. BART RAYNIAK/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Sources: The U.S. Geological Survey, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, “1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens” by Jimmy Wai-Leong Tam and Alex Reynolds of Simon Fraser University, “The Eruption of Mount St. Helens” by the editors of Charles River, “Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens” by Patricia Lauber, Washinton State University Insider, LiveScience.com, The Spokesman-Review files

- T

8

Main

SPECIAL 8

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON/FOR THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Pumice and debris thrown miles from Mount St. Helens during its May 18, 1980, eruption extend across the expanse of the Pumice Plain one year later.

CHANGE Continued from 5 with Johnston so he could talk with a professor about his ongoing graduate work. Also on board was Barry Voight, geologist and brother to Jon, the actor.

Johnston’s body was never found, but pieces of his camper and backpack were. Glicken, guiltstricken over his colleague’s death, had three helicopter pilots fly him over the mountain in those first days. A decade later, Glicken was doing research on the active Mount Unzen in Japan. It erupted and he was killed, just like Johnston. The two are the only American volcanologists to be killed in volcanic eruptions.

“What we were trying to do on that first trip, in addition to Harry and Voight looking for the David Johnston camp, we were also trying to figure out the relative timing of the giant landslide and the blast,” Swanson said.

But they saw the beginning of what’s continuing to this day.

“There had been forests on that long slope down to Spirit Lake that had established after that eruption back around 1800,” Swanson said.

“So it was big timber. It wasn’t old growth in the sense of being many centuries old, but it was approaching 200 years. A lot of the floating mat of logs that are now still on Spirit Lake and moving around with the winds, those were trees that were on the slope between the main body of the volcano down to the shores of Spirit Lake. They were shoved into the lake by the landslide.”

The landslide also hit the lake with such ferocity that a wave, hundreds of feet tall, swept bare the lake’s adjacent slopes.

“It’s totally mind boggling,” Swanson said. “I’m still breathless when I go in there all these years later.”

a volcano.

After the 1980 eruption, Spirit Lake was “was left a steaming black broth full of logs, dead animals, pumice and ash. Its surface area nearly doubled to about 2,200 acres, and its sole outlet, to the North Fork Toutle River, was buried under up to 600 feet of debris,” Wagner reported in High Country News.

With no outlet and nature’s continual recharge of rain and snow, Spirit Lake began to rise. If it spilled its banks, another mudflow could rage down the North Fork Toutle River Valley and threaten the people in Longview, Castle Rock and Toutle.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found a solution in a 1.6-mile tunnel it built in 1985 below Johnston Ridge, named for the scientist who died in the eruption. For dec-

ades it worked, but the tunnel has been damaged by the area’s seismic grumblings, leading engineers to close it multiple times for maintenance.

But the repairs are not enough.

The U.S. Forest Service, which manages the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, has plans to build a second outlet for Spirit Lake. To do that, it needs to drill into the earth to assess the debris’ composition. And to do that, the agency has proposed building a 3-mile road through Pumice Plain to move drilling equipment to test sites.

Scientists studying the mountain and conservationists have objected.

In April, the Forest Service gave a green light to the road.

“The monument was created in 1982 as a place where geologic processes and ecological succession

A place of wonder

Pumice Plain lies between the volcano’s crater and where Johnston camped.

Before the volcano, it held all those trees that are now floating in Spirit Lake, and it was home to countless creatures and plants that call a forest home. But the plain was “sterilized of life” by the eruption, according to the Mount St. Helens Institute.

Since then, it’s become an example of what happens after a volcano, and “ecologists have scrutinized it, surveying birds, mammals and plants, and in general cataloging the return of life to this unique and fragile landscape,” according to Wagner in High Country News.

Now, the landscape is under threat again. This time it’s not from

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mount St. Helens looms over Spirit Lake, still full of debris, seen at center right, from the volcano's 1980 eruption, as photographed on Oct. 3, 2004.

‘‘

can continue substantially unimpeded. The ‘substantially unimpeded’ part is what everybody hangs their hat on,” Wagner said in an interview.

“It’s like a big national laboratory,” he said. “It’s a big natural experiment taking place on this vast scale. So you have this sense that the land is operating on its own. But the closer you look, you see how that really isn’t true.”

Wagner says the “ideals” of letting nature run its course don’t always fly with surrounding communities that don’t want their towns destroyed by a mudflow, or that would prefer hiking, fishing and camping on the mountain instead of keeping it pristine.

Wagner says no one wants Spirit Lake to overflow. But some see a better solution to building a road like, for instance, surveying drill sites by helicopter. But that would be expensive and logistically complex.

Regardless of what happens to Pumice Plain, Wagner points to it as a place of wonder, scientifically speaking.

It’s where prairie lupines took root after the eruption. The first seeds of the purple-blue wildflowers likely arrived with the wind, and each of these growing legumes “fixed” nitrogen in the soil and created a microhabitat that allowed other plant species to thrive. The plants trapped debris and lured insects, which ultimately died near them and decomposed, further enriching the soil.

Gophers, the early survivors, tunneled through the earth, mixing up this rich soil created by the lupine and creating more places for new plants to grow. One of those plants was Indian paintbrush, which attracted elk, whose hooves broke through the crust and mixed the soil with their droppings, which contained seeds and fungal spores, furthering biological diversity.

“Every organism that was there before the eruption is now back,” Wagner said. “Just in different abundances and different ways.”

The timescale of geology moves so slowly that it’s generally beyond human comprehension. A volcanic eruption is the exact opposite, when the forces of earth move destructively fast. But life on earth perseveres through it all. Even on the side of a volcano.

“I was talking to a forest ecologist and he said, ‘You know, 140 years is within the lifespan of a tree,’ ” Wagner said. “A big Douglas fir can live several hundred years. To live and grow on the slopes of Mount St. Helens is to be subject to multiple eruptions over the course of a lifetime. There’s never really a sense of stability there. There’s always going to be flux and disturbance and change.”

It’s like a big national laboratory. It’s a big natural experiment taking place on this vast scale. So you have this sense that the land is operating on its own. But the closer you look, you see how that really isn’t true.”

Eric Wagner High Country News writer

- T

9

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 9

ELI FRANCOVICH/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Skiers and hikers make their way up the Worm Flow route on Mount St. Helens on May 3, 2019.

An ascent of Mount St. Helens decades after its eruption offers a lesson about the risks of inattention

By Eli Francovich THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

We summited under a cobalt blue sky and a fierce spring sun. The steep snow-covered terrain eased, and we stood on a flat(ish) spot, about the size of a basketball court.

Mount St. Helens is 8,366 feet tall, and on a clear day, as this one was, you can see up and down the Cascade Range, volcanic sentinels dotting the West Coast.

After five hours of effort, the view was a welcome reward. My climbing partner and I rested.

We weren’t alone in our admiration. The top of the mountain was crowded with about 30 other climbers. Many were in their T-shirts, as I was, basking in the sunlight. I saw a few cracked beers and lots of smiles.

It felt like a summer party, aside from the thousands of feet of air on all sides.

We’d ascended a route known as the Worm Flow route; it’s the most direct (and easiest) line up the mountain in the winter and spring.

It’s a five-mile path that gains about

5,700 feet. The route’s name comes from its shape: raised tubes, remnants of the rivers of lava that coursed down the mountain’s southern flank during an eruption.

The lava left sharp ridges of volcanic rock that look as if gigantic worms (“Dune,” anyone?) burrowed down the mountain.

The violent force necessary to create these flows is unimaginable.

But signs of that eruption were all around. To our north, lay the crescent shaped rim of the volcano’s cal-

The Dizzy Chronicles, Part 2

JAZZMAN CHILLS AT SPOKANE HOTEL AS CITY REMAINS SHUT DOWN

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

The Spokane Daily Chronicle, the former afternoon daily in Spokane, was sticking with the Dizzy Gillespie story.

In the May 20 edition, our unnamed reporter told readers that Gillespie was still looking for a backgammon partner, and was passing the time watching TV in his room at the Sheraton-Spokane Hotel, which is now the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Spokane City Center.

He also informed folks that the May 18 concert called off because of Mount St. Helens had been rescheduled for October.

Gillespie indicated he wasn’t up for

rehearsing for it right at that moment.

Gillespie, with a laugh, told the reporter he’d been asked to “entertain the others (in the hotel) who are stranded, but I said, ‘Oh, man, shoot! I am just going to enjoy this monk’s retreat.’ ” Seems this was the first “forced vacation” he’d had in a while, and he was enjoying “just lying there,” he said before adding, “I’m just glad the hotel’s got such a nice restaurant.”

He said he was expecting to be on a United Airlines flight the next morning to head home to New Jersey, but there was some doubt the airport would be open.

See Dizzy Chronicles, Part 3 on Page 11

dera. The lava contained beneath that dome still regularly sends steam and sulfur into the air.

But, on a warm May day last year, violence and change were far from my mind.

We ate. We chatted with some of the other sunbathing climbers and then we prepared for the truly fun part.

Skiing down.

Many, perhaps most, people hike up Mount St. Helens. It’s considered one of easiest Cascade volcanoes to

summit and requires little technical knowledge.

However, there is a better way.

Skiing up using specially designed “skins” on the bottoms of your skis to grip the snow.

Once on top you can ski down, avoiding a long slow slog downhill.

This was our plan and the driving force behind our climb. Views are enjoyable. Good spring skiing is sublime.

I’d borrowed a friend’s pair of skis. An ultralight design meant for long days of uphill travel. This trip was my first time on them. They were like many other pairs of skis I’ve used, except for in one key difference: They did not have brakes.

Ski brakes are twin spring-loaded pieces of metal that dig into the snow. As the name implies, they keep your skis from rocketing down the hill.

These skis I’d borrowed had tethers, that is a cord that clipped to my ski boot. They were a bit awkward to put on, especially when wearing gloves. And so, slightly tired from lunch and overly relaxed, I didn’t clip my ski to my boot, instead setting it down on the nearly flat surface of snow and ice.

Nearly flat doesn’t cut it.

It started slow, but within a second or less my ski had gone beyond recovery and was rocketing down the steep slope.

Four people were hiking up this hill. I screamed down at them, aware of the damage an out-of-control ski can do. The other 30 or so on the summit yelled, too.

The ski picked up speed, skipping over undulations in the snow, headed toward the distant group.

Ever-changing world

Geologic time. Deep time.

Both terms reference, broadly, the unimaginable scope of Earth’s history. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a “functionally eternal 180 million years,” which as the journalist Peter Brannen points out in an essay

See CLIMB, 10

MOUNT ST. HELENS CRITICAL MEMORY Visit the MAC online for daily videos and posts leading up to the 40th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption. Join us on May 18 for special stories and commemorative activities. www.facebook.com/NorthwestMuseumofArtandCulture www.youtube.com/c/NorthwestMuseumofArtsandCulture

The exhibition Mount St. Helens: Critical Memory will reopen this summer and run until Sept 6, 2020. northwestmuseum.org

- T

10

Main

SPECIAL 10

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

PHOTOS BY ELI FRANCOVICH/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Hikers and skiers rest near the top of Mount St. Helens on May 3, 2019.

CLIMB Continued from 9

CLOSURE AREA 1 • Off trail travel prohibited • Day use only • No drone zone

PAVED ROAD

Gr ee

nR iv

er

CLOSURE AREA 2 • Climbing permit required year round • No drone zone

MOUNT MARGARET BACKCOUNTRY

Spirit Lake

Coldwater Lake

r ate arw k Cle Cree

North Fork Toutle River Sout Tout h Fork le Riv er

MOUNT S T. H E L E N S 8,363 feet

MOUNT S T. H E L E N ’ S NATIONAL PARK

dy ud r M ive R

ma Kala er Riv

N

e Pin ek Cre

in the Atlantic, is 36,000 times longer than recorded human history.

Rocks and mountains move at this pace. Our static seeming landscape is anything but that. Geologic time is now, Edward Abbey wrote, in reference to the slow shifting of rock and settling of mountains, even if we don’t notice.

Consider the rocks you find at the base of any cliff. They were not placed there by humans, and they did not grow from the dirt. They fell from the slopes above, trundling denouncements of our belief in immutable things.

When I climb mountains, I become hyperaware of our ever-shifting reality.

Trusting your life to a piece of stone requires a confusing blend of sobriety and abandon.

Perched on the side of a mountain, you start to feel how this seemingly permanent object is anything but. The sound of distant (hopefully) falling rock and ice may be the first sign.

Then, as you move up its flank, you start considering each hand hold. Testing each foothold. Wondering if the moment you decide to trust your future upon it, is the moment it succumbs to gravity.

It’s not how I spend most of my life. I barrel forward, blithely assuming that things will continue more or less how I expect. I trust my life to cars and buildings and food bought from restaurants.

This is part of the appeal of climbing, for me and others. The intentional focus and attention. The realization that we are mortal, and the world is ever-changing.

But, shifting into this mindset doesn’t just happen. It takes an effort of will. It’s hard work to pay attention to your surroundings.

And I wasn’t doing that last year on the side of Mount St. Helens.

MOUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL VOLCANIC MONUMENT

MOUNT ST. HELENS RESTRICTIONS

2 MIL ES

Cougar Yale Lake

Swift Reservoir

503

Source: U.S. Departement of Agriculture

An avoidable mistake

About halfway down the steepest section the ski, through a miracle of physics, hit a particularly large bump at an angle, flew into the air, rotated 180 degrees and landed up-

MOLLY QUINN/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

side down.

This accomplished two things: Most importantly, it sent the ski away from the four folks hiking uphill.

And second, the binding bit into the snow, and the ski slowed and

Two people rest near the summit of Mount St. Helens on May 3, 2019. In the background is Mount Adams.

eventually stopped about 400 feet downhill from me.

I’d been incredibly lucky, twice.

Past the immediate fear of hurting or killing someone, I felt shame. A stupid and 100% avoidable mistake.

I hiked down, retrieved my wayward ski and skied back to the car without incident. I apologized to the four people hiking up. They gave me frosty glares, as I deserved.

The entire incident still haunts me. I was rattled and shocked by my lapse in attention. My arrogant disregard for gravity. I still shudder thinking about how it all could have happened with just a little less luck.

I’d like to think I’m more careful and attentive. And I’ve thought a lot about how the combination of things (good weather, lots of people) made it easier for me to lower my guard and forget the power of gravity.

But, the full meaning of the experience didn’t come into focus until I started reading about the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

This mountain, this massive chunk of rock and dirt, changed overnight. How disorienting! What an affront to our presumed control of the natural world.

And I saw echoes of my own arrogance in the press reports. In the spring of 1980, most people couldn’t imagine the scale of the upcoming Mount St. Helens eruption, seeing it instead as “an entertaining sideshow,” as Jim Kershner, a historian and Spokesman-Review contributor wrote recently.

All of which, in my mind, comes back to geologic time.

Because things move slowly, we believe they aren’t moving at all. Because we move quickly, we fail to see the signs of change: whether it’s shifting snow and ice or a warming climate or an untethered ski on not quite flat terrain.

CONTACT THE WRITER:

(509) 459-5508 elif@spokesman.com

- T

11

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 11

DESPITE ERUPTION, A BUMPER WHEAT CROP Bigger issue was foreign markets affected by geopolitics

By Kip Hill THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Much of the 540 million tons of ash that spewed from Mount St. Helens during its eruption fell on ranchlands and crop fields across Central and Eastern Washington, creating a brief period of uncertainty for agriculture.

“It was a pretty big deal. People didn’t know what to do, and that included the farmers,” said Bill Schillinger, a professor and scientist at the Washington State University dryland research station in Lind.

In May 1980, Schillinger was just returning from a trip to Nepal to his family farm in Odessa. Schillinger said it was one of the hardest hit areas, with 4 or 5 inches of ash coating the fields, farm equipment and homes.

“I spent a lot of time that summer on the roof of my mom’s house, clearing it off,” Schillinger said.

Fears of a wheat harvest adversely affected by the volcanic ash were shortlived, however, as 1980 turned out to be a record year for the crop. Reports from the time show most agriculture in Eastern Washington and North Idaho was either largely unaffected by the cataclysmic eruption, or that larger market forces were at play in determining the financial success of crops and livestock.

While some areas, like Odessa, were blanketed with ash, the clouds didn’t cover all fields in the area to the same depth. The Palouse is also known for its deep, rich soil. A few inches of ash wasn’t enough to cause long-term effects on the soil, said Rich Koenig, chair of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at WSU. “I am not sure the ash has had any long-term impact on agriculture, either positive or negative,” Koenig wrote in an email last month. “The amount of ash was variable, but still relatively small compared to the overall mass or volume of soil.”

Most farmers simply plowed the ash into the soil after harvest, said Randy Suess, a retired wheat farmer who was working for the schools in Steptoe in 1980.

“It was a Sunday afternoon when it erupted,” Suess said. “I came out of church, looked up and saw this big cloud.

I thought, ‘I’ve got to mow the lawn real quick, it’s going to rain.’ ” The ash fell just as the winter wheat had started to poke up out of the ground, which may have insulated the plants and killed off feeding insects, Suess said. Couple that with an above-average year of precipitation, and by the middle of the summer farmers were looking at a bumper crop.

“The wheat is so good and so thick in the low rainfall (nonirrigated) areas, you’d almost swear you could walk across it without touching the ground,” Scott Hanson, then-administrator of the Washington Wheat Commission, told The Spokesman-Review on July 20, 1980.

Getting the wheat out of the ground, however, proved a challenge. Suess spent his summer as a volunteer firefighter hosing down streets, sidewalks and the sides of buildings, as more and more ash

PHIL SCHOFIELD/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Phil Gage, of Best Way Equipment in Palouse, takes a break from sweeping off ash-covered farm implements in June 1980. would be kicked up when cars drove by.

That ash would be sucked into the filters of trucks and combines plying the Palouse’s hills, leading to increased expenses in maintenance and parts.

“We’re seeing parts that should last two or three more years wearing out with just a few days’ use,” Mel Kagele, a wheat farmer near Ritzville, told The Spokane Daily Chronicle on Aug. 20, 1980.

And once it was out of the ground, there were fewer places to sell it, initially.

President Jimmy Carter in January had ordered an embargo on wheat sales to Russia after the country invaded Afghanistan. In April, Carter ended diplomatic ties with Iran in the midst of the hostage

crisis, cutting off the monthly sale of about 200,000 tons of Northwest wheat to the country.

By the end of August, wheat was being stockpiled at elevators as the ships carrying grain to the coast were overwhelmed by a record crop estimated at about 155 million bushels. By the end of the year, other countries had begun buying soft white wheat from the Northwest that were typically customers of the hard red variety grown elsewhere in the country.

Scarcity of that variety caused Washington farmers to find new customers in Egypt, Morocco, Yugoslavia and Poland, according to a Dec. 28, 1980, agriculture report published in The Spokesman-Re-

view.

Other crops that had faced uncertainty also experienced bumper years. The lentil crop in 1980 also set a record, and potato yields were higher than the year prior, although production acreage had fallen. That caused prices for a bag of potatoes to jump $1 in 1980.

Some cattle were lost as a result of ranchland ash damage, but for cattle ranchers, it was increasing interest rates that raised costs, according to that Dec. 28 report.

CONTACT THE WRITER:

(509) 459-5429 kiph@spokesman.com

‘‘

I am not sure the ash has had any long-term impact on agriculture, either positive or negative.”

Rich Koenig Chair of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Washington State University

The Dizzy Chronicles, Part 3

Dizzy Gillespie, one of the luminaries trapped in Spokane by volcanic ash, would rather have been home in New Jersey on May 19, 1980, but he was able to muster a smile during breakfast at the SheratonSpokane Hotel.

THAT’S A DIZZYING DIVORCE TALE

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

By day three, things were getting tense on the Dizzy Gillespie beat.

Our intrepid Chronicle reporter – still not identified with a byline – reached out to the jazz legend on his third day in Spokane after the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

Gillespie then dropped a bombshell: His wife of 40 years, Lorraine, was filing for divorce.

“How would you like an exclusive?” Gillespie told the Chronicle reporter. “My wife filed

for divorce. ... That is the truth.”

The reason? She’d apparently just gotten around to reading the jazz icon’s autobiography, “To Be or Not to Bop: Memoirs,” published the year before, and was none too pleased.

“She was too busy. Too busy with my business and didn’t find time to read it,” he is quoted in the article headlined “Gillespie marriage crumbling? Another reason to get moving.” “There were several things she didn’t like. I don’t know what exactly.

“I can’t be more specific because I haven’t read the (divorce) papers yet.”

The Chronicle reporter called the county courthouse in Trenton, New Jersey, where the Gillespies lived, to inquire about a filing.

Nothing had been filed, but the clerk said the papers could still be in the mail.

When told that reports of divorce filings might be premature, Gillespie replied, “Well, maybe she’s changed her mind, maybe she won’t file.” He added he hoped they could “straighten things out” when he got home. Divorce, he said, “would be the end of me.”

See Dizzy Chronicles, Part 4 on Page 13

DON JAMISON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

- T

13

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

The Dizzy Chronicles, Part 4

NOT SO FAST, MR. GILLESPIE

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

As it turned out, divorce was not the end of him. There wasn’t even a divorce.

After jazz great Dizzy Gillespie told a Spokane Daily Chronicle reporter that his wife was divorcing him because of something she read in his autobiography, the story went

national.

But in the afternoon edition of May 23, 1980, the story took a different turn: “Hubby spouts nonsense, declares Mrs. Gillespie” was the headline that day.

As the story reports: “John B. Gillespie was living up to his nickname – Dizzy – Wednesday when he said in Spokane his wife was divorcing

him.

“His spouse says so. “ ‘He’s always rattling off at the mouth,’ his wife, Lorriane, told the Chronicle by phone today from her home in New Jersey. “ ‘He’s got people looking for him, thinking he is his twin brother,’ she said, laughing.”

She was in good humor about the whole situation.

“I guess maybe the volcano wasn’t too good for him,” she is quoted as saying.

“I haven’t even read the book yet,” she continued. “I’ve been working too hard. I’m so busy spending his money and he’s too cheap to get one (a divorce) himself, as much as that would cost him.” She reportedly laughed as she said it.

Lorraine Willis Gillespie was not only Gillespie’s wife, she was his business manager.

She speculated about what was going on with her husband, who had been in Spokane for a concert the day Mount St. Helens erupted and he ended up trapped

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 13

here. The fact that he wasn’t interested in playing his famous bent trumpet while stuck at the Sheraton Spokane Hotel clued her in that her husband might be getting a bit stir crazy.

“He earned that name – Dizzy.

He’s always got something crazy going on. It’s just like him,” she said. “It’s the first time in his life he couldn’t move around. He called (home) two or three times a day. It was really getting on his nerves.”

The Gillespies remained married until Dizzy’s 1993 death from pancreatic cancer at age 75.

See Dizzy Chronicles, Part 5 on Page 22

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Gov. Dixy Lee Ray meets with reporters after flying with the National Guard over the devastation left by the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980.

A look back at a natural disaster in the making

By Jim Kershner FOR THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

The small earthquakes began on March 15, 1980. The first headlines appeared a week later when an earthquake registering 4.1 on the Richter scale was recorded at Mount St. Helens on March 20. On March 27, the mountain started belching steam, and scientists tasked with monitoring the volcanoes of the Cascade Mountains knew something was brewing.

This spring, Spokane historian and Spokesman-Review contributor Jim Kershner has been recapping the developments at Mount St. Helens on Sundays in his history column. Here we’ve tied them all together, giving readers an overview of the birth of an eruption. l

l

l

The headline in the Spokane Daily Chronicle on March 22, 1980, didn’t seem too alarming: “Mount St. Helens Area is Rattled.”

An earthquake registering 4.1 on the Richter scale shook the seemingly inactive volcano, but officials downplayed the significance, noting that there were no reports of damage and “earthquakes are common in that area.”

Yet the tremors continued the next few days. On March 24, the Chronicle ran a headline that asked, “Mount St. Helens to Spout?” A

University of Washington seismologist answered that question with a “maybe.”

“We’ve had an increase in the number of earthquakes near the mountain and that’s what one might expect if it’s going to erupt,” said the seismologist. “But that doesn’t mean it will. You won’t know for sure until it does, if it does.”

The Spokesman-Review ran a comical headline on March 27, 1980 – “Skiing Good? – Lava-ly!” – citing a tongue-in-cheek ski report that said skiing on the mountain was “very hot” and skiers should “dress in asbestos.” (There was no ski resort on the mountain.)

The laughter vanished later that day when Mount St. Helens began to rumble in earnest. The Spokesman-Review ran a front page story on March 28 by reporter Robert L. Rose. His lead sentence has become legendary in local journalism circles.

“Mount St. Helens, a lady with a 123-year-old tummyache, erupted with a gigantic volcanic burp Thursday, a sound like a sonic boom heard 45 miles away.”

That certainly caught everyone’s attention. The rest of the story sounded some ominous notes.

“There was no sign of molten lava, but the eruption was monitored by scientists who worried that heat and jolting motion could set off mudslides and floods that could endanger three nearby dams and the whole valley,” wrote Rose.

The Spokesman-Review sent a photographer and reporter to circle the mountain in a Cessna, and an inside page was devoted entirely to Mount St. Helens news. People in communities near the mountain were “sleeping with one eye open.”

Gov. Dixy Lee Ray embarked on an aerial inspection and declared it “quite a thrill.” A Spokane preacher called it “a revelation of God’s will.” l

l

l

On March 29, 1980, The Spokesman-Review’s front page photo showed Mount St. Helens’ pristine white cone – and a plume of steam and ash coming out the top.

The accompanying story noted that new eruptions were producing gases, steam and ash clouds that rose to 17,000 feet. Chunks of rock, ripped from the old volcano vent, “exploded 100 to 200 feet in the air.”

See HISTORY, 14

- T

14

Main

SPECIAL 14

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

ST. HELENS OF TODAY On Saturday, May 9, Alisha Jucevic, a photojournalist and videographer with the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington, grabbed her gear and headed to Mount St. Helens. Forty years ago, the mountain was an active volcano scene. Today, things are much quieter. Still the evidence of nature’s awesome fury continues to be on display. The mountain’s crater stands in stark contrast to the intact peaks of nearby Adams, Hood and Rainier.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALISHA JUCEVIC/THE COLUMBIAN

HISTORY Continued from 13 This was alarming, but apparently it was also “exciting.”

“This is the first real volcanic activity in the Cascade Range that can be studied with modern instruments, so I think everybody is terribly excited about what is going on,” said Gov. Ray. She also said “we do have to keep in mind that there is a potential for a great deal of destruction.”

The next day, The Spokesman-Review attempted to reassure Spokane residents by noting the painfully obvious: Mount Spokane is not a volcano!

A scientist said the chances of volcanic activity on Mount Spokane were “zip and next to zip.” And that other mountain was 240 miles away!

The next day Mount St. Helens rained some ash on Portland, but none on Spokane because there was no southwesterly wind. The day after that, Mount St. Helens had fewer eruptions – but slightly bigger ones.

By April 3, the mountain exhibited its most alarming sign yet – a harmonic tremor, indicating molten magma was moving up into the volcano. The SpokesmanReview’s headline was “Mountain Goes Wild!” and scientists were now warning of a potential huge blast.

On April 4, Gov. Ray declared a state of emergency in the area around the volcano.

The paper ran a story warning people to stay indoors if a heavy fall of ash were to occur. l

l

l

On April 5, 1980, The Spokesman-Review’s front page ran this headline: “It’s Shaking and Baking.”

Mount St. Helens was showing “her most vital seismic signs yet,” wrote reporter John Kafentzis, with several powerful earthquakes and harmonic tremors.

The mountain was even tossing up “ice bombs” – frozen projectiles up to 20 feet long.

Kafentzis, stationed near Vancouver, reported the next day that the mountain had quieted down somewhat.

Washington State Patrol troopers were having a hard time keeping sightseers away from the mountain. About 60 National Guard troops were called in to relieve the troopers on the roadblocks.

Some good news: Dinky the cat, who streaked up a fir tree when the mountain first rumbled, had been rescued after eight days by a tree-climbing forester.

On April 8, 1980, the paper reported that the mountain was still “perking away like a car idling.” On April 9, scientists expressed the hope that the chances for a full-scale eruption were lessening.

The volcano had dominated the news for weeks, but now it had moved off the front page.

Oddly, some people were disappointed.

The Spokesman-Review ran a guest editorial from the Oregonian that expressed the “secret hope that Mount St. Helens will put on a good show … a respectable

eruption that will cause the world to admire one of the youngest of all of the volcanic sisters.”

This seems spectacularly misguided in retrospect, but the Oregonian did admit that it was not in favor of a “big China Syndrome core meltdown.” l

l

l

Mount St. Helens was relegated to page 22 of The Spokesman-Review on April 12, 1980, after weeks of dominating the front page.

This reflected a diminution of activity – or at least, what appeared to be a diminution. Scientists noted only a few minor eruptions and “slight” earthquakes, and no harmonic tremors.

A false sense of security was building.

The next day, the headline read, “Volcano Show Draws a Crowd.”

Tourists “flocked to Mount St. Helens on the first clear, spring weekend day” since Mount St. Helens began acting up in March.

“The volcano watchers gathered at viewing points along Interstate 5,” the Associated Press reported.

A number of people rented small planes at the Kelso, Washington, airport to get even closer.

This reached an apex on April 14, when the Associated Press reported that two mountain climbers were seen “inching their way to the top of the 9,677-foot peak.” Several other climbers had been seen on the mountain as well. Two television news helicopters actually landed on the crest of the mountain.

This was clearly dangerous – and not just in retrospect. The next day the paper noted that people entering the area were violating federal law and could be prosecuted.

However, the mountain remained relatively quiet through April 18, leading people to think that the worst was over. A grocery store in Toutle, Washington, was already selling T-shirts reading “Survivor – Eruption Mount St. Helens 1980.” l

l

l

Mount St. Helens had been relatively quiet for a week, but on April 19, 1980, scientists issued a warning.

They had noticed “great amounts of ground shaking and avalanching caused by local earthquakes.” They also saw evidence that heat was causing the snow and ice to melt faster than usual.

They announced that they were putting additional monitors on the north side of the mountain to “assess the hazard it presents to the Spirit Lake area and the North Toutle River drainage.”

On April 23, a government scientist said “sharp, successive earthquakes and frequent explosions” should be a sign to area cabin owners to “leave the uneasy peak.”

The elderly owner of a lodge at Spirit Lake, Harry Truman, still stubbornly refused to evacuate.

Some people were heeding the omens. A leader of the Puyallup Tribe said he had moved his family away from the PuyallupTacoma area to Spokane. The reason: “You ignore visions to your own detriment. …

The mountain spoke.”

However, most people still regarded the mountain as an entertaining sideshow. On April 24, syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer wrote that she was on a commercial flight out of Sea-Tac Airport, when the pilot announced that he was avoiding Mount St. Helens as a precaution.

The passengers’ reaction? They were “genuinely disappointed.”

On April 25, 1980, The Spokesman-Review reported an alarming development. A bulge on the north side of the mountain’s crater was growing. It was now 250 feet high. Scientists were worried that it could cause a landslide, which could reach as far as the north fork of the Toutle River and possibly raise the level of Spirit Lake.

In fact, this bulge was a portent of something far more catastrophic. l

l

l

Mount St. Helens still was rumbling on April 26, 1980, but scientists had no idea what it might portend.

“Ground tilt has been recorded, but doesn’t conclusively show the volcano is either expanding or contracting,” reported the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Harry Truman (no relation to the former president) was becoming an international celebrity for refusing to evacuate from his Spirit Lake lodge at the base of the mountain. He had been warned repeatedly that he was in danger, but the most he agreed to do was shift his bed to the basement “because of the near constant shaking.”

Now, people all over world were writing to him with words of support. He even received three proposals of marriage.

“Everybody wants a piece of old Truman now,” said Harry, who admitted to being somewhat over 80 years old.

He particularly liked the letters written by kids, even though many urged him to leave. One letter read, “Only one person (in our class) thinks you should stay, but he’s strange anyway.”

By April 29, 1980, scientists were worried about a potential massive avalanche, caused by an alarming bulge on the peak’s north side. A milewide slab of ice, snow and rock could break loose.

The next day, scientists warned that this growing bulge could be the harbinger of something far more devastating. It might mean “molten rock is rising through the mountain on its way to an explosive lava eruption.”

By May 2, the mountain’s contortions had grown so alarming that Gov. Ray ordered everybody except scientists and law enforcement officers out of a 5-mile radius around the mountain.

Truman, however, stayed put. l

l

l

A bulge near the top of Mount St. Helens was growing on May 3, 1980, and scientists were uncertain what to make of it. The most alarming explanation was that “pressure of molten rock is building within the volcano.”

Even if that weren’t the case, the bulge could trigger a landslide or snow slide, which could reach Spirit Lake or the north fork of the Toutle River.

The next day, the bulge grew even larg-

er. The Goat Rock area on the mountain moved almost 10 feet.

By May 7, scientists were certain that the bulge was caused by molten rock moving up from deep beneath the mountain.

They also grew increasingly alarmed that the bulge would collapse and cause a huge mudflow. However, they believed such a mudflow would not endanger any populated areas.

Then, on May 8, Mount St. Helens spoke once again. It spewed smoke and ash for the first time in weeks. The plume went 2,000 feet high.

That same day, scientists discovered a “hot spot” under the bulge, and said the “hazard on the north side of the mountain is greater than at any time” since the volcano began erupting. They also confessed to being “mystified” about the volcano’s ultimate intentions.

Meanwhile, Truman, the elderly owner of a Spirit Lake lodge, refused to leave despite repeated pleas. l

l

l

The week got off to an ominous start on May 10, 1980, when an earthquake jolted Mount St. Helens – the biggest quake since the mountain started rumbling.

Scientists “continued wondering about the restless volcano’s ultimate intentions.”

The next day, they issued their most serious warning yet. During the daily news briefing, they no longer said “if it erupts.”

They said “when it erupts.”

One scientist warned that eruptions sometimes were tied with the gravitational pull of the sun and moon, which would peak on May 21.

On May 13, The Spokesman-Review reported that a large earthquake let loose an avalanche of ice on the mountain’s north flank. A scientist said the whole area was in a “precarious situation,” and officials again urged area resident Harry Truman to leave his Spirit Lake lodge.

They offered to fly him out via helicopter, but he said, “I’ve made up my mind more than ever not to leave.”

On May 16, a three-man team from the Boy Scouts of America was flown into Spirit Lake to retrieve 18,000 pounds of camp equipment. This seemed like a perilous undertaking (especially in retrospect), but a helicopter was poised at all times to fly them out if the mountain acted up.

A group of cabin owners threatened to defy a state roadblock and form a “vehicle caravan” to make a run into their cabins to recover belongings. The sheriff vowed to keep them out, but officials were also considering allowing them in as long as they signed a release.

On May 17, 1980, however, the mountain’s “intentions” seemed clearer than ever. The north flank of the mountain was expanding northward at the rate of 5 feet per day. Scientists weren’t sure how much longer that could go on before the whole thing might “break loose.”

And in a story that should have caught the attention of people in Eastern Washington, an amateur volcano researcher (and spaghetti house owner) in Toppenish warned, “What are we going to do here if we get a foot of ash? That could happen, you know.”

- T

15

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 15

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW ARCHIVE

Chris Pederson cleans off the sidewalk at Indiana Avenue and Wall Street in Spokane in the days following the eruption of Mount St. Helens in May of 1980.

neighborhood in exploring the fields. It didn’t take long to spot the trails in the ash. These tiny footprints meandered for several feet, looping in on themselves a few times before ending with a dead bee, or grasshopper or other insect, like some horrible punctuation mark, presumably suffocated by the ash.

It was a stark reminder that for all of the fun of missing school and being part of “something big,” the eruption of Mount St. Helens was a monumental event in Eastern Washington. And in the days that followed the eruption, the leaders and residents of our region struggled to deal with something few had imagined possible.

We look back at how Spokane’s two daily newspapers, the morning Spokesman-Review and the afternoon Spokane Daily Chronicle, reported this moment in history.

Following Mount St. Helens’ cataclysmic blast, Inland Northwest struggled with one epic mess

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Fairchild Air Force Base canceled its annual open house. Members of the Spokane Jazz Orchestra left their instruments on stage at the Spokane Opera House, waiting for a concert with legendary jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie that didn’t happen. Schools closed.

Freeways, too. Planes stayed parked at Spokane International Airport as skies turned black, streetlights came on early in the afternoon, and it started “snowing” on what should have been a lovely spring day in May. After two months of intensifying activity, Mount St. Helens in southwestern Washington erupted at 8:32 a.m. on Sunday, May 18, 1980.

Fifty-seven people died, including Spirit Lake innkeeper Harry R. Truman, who had become a bit of a folk hero for refusing to evacuate his home. “You couldn’t pull me out with a mule team,” he was quoted as saying. “That mountain’s part of Truman and Truman’s part of that mountain.”

When the north side of St. Helens collapsed in the largest landslide in recorded history, it let loose a cataclysmic event that eventually blew 1,300 vertical feet off the top of the mountain. The ash plume from its new crater shot as high as 16 miles.

Winds pushed the ash cloud to east, where it deposited its volcanic residue on a dozen states; it took two weeks for the ash to circle the globe.

The force of the eruption flattened a forest of nearly 200-year-old Douglas firs and blasted them into Spirit Lake. The Toutle River, filled with fallen trees, heated mud and other debris, turned into a torrent, demolishing homes and bridges, drowning anyone or anything that was in its path.

Here in Eastern Washington, residents watched in awe as massive, ominous black clouds marched across the state from the southwest, bringing premature nighttime and

inches of gray, gritty, dusty ash.

Kids were called inside and in some families, the parents covered themselves from head to toe – heavy coats, bandanas for masks, ski goggles, moon boots! – and made their way to nearby grocery stores for supplies as the ash started falling.

Then we hunkered down and waited.

When daylight returned the next morning, residents of Spokane awoke to a world nearly devoid of color. Ash covered our cars, our streets, our yards. We were advised to avoid driving, not only to help crews more easily clear roadways, but because the ash would clog a vehicle’s air filter and wreak havoc under the hood. We were asked to stay inside, and when we did venture out, we were encouraged to

wear masks to keep from breathing in the ash particles.

There was no such thing as “remote learning” in those days – or even cable TV in some parts of town – and it didn’t take long for bored children to begin begging their parents to go outside. Some parents relented, making sure their children were well protected from the ashy deposits. When kids stamped the ash, it kicked up like fine, dry powder on an ungroomed ski hill.

I was 12 years old when Mount St. Helens erupted, and living near Mead High School. The neighborhood wasn’t fully developed yet, and the vacant fields that surrounded our home were our unofficial playgrounds. When we were finally allowed to go out, my siblings and I joined kids from the

May 19, 1980

“Volcano explodes!” screamed the lead headline in the morning edition of The Spokesman-Review.

Below it across the width of the page was an astonishing photo of the mountain eruption, captured by staff photographer Christopher Anderson. Staff writers Robert Rose and Rick Bonino, in a story with a Vancouver dateline, described a “killer volcano,” with eight known fatalities, and quoted a pilot who described the scene as looking like “an atomic bomb had hit the area.”

Another staff writer, Jim Borden, had an upclose look at the eruption.

He and his wife were en route to California for a vacation and had stopped at Morton, Washington, about 30 miles north of the mountain, for the night. At 8 a.m. Sunday morning, they continued on their journey, and it wasn’t long before they spotted the mountain, which “appeared quiet and calm.”

The tranquility didn’t last.

“But a couple of minutes later, we spotted a puff of black smoke rising from the volcano, and within five

See CLEANUP, 16 Don Pease waits to take off in his experimental Boeing F-86 as the ash cloud from Mount St. Helens approaches Fairchild Air Force Base west of Spokane around 2:30 p.m. on May 18, 1980.

J. BART RAYNIAK THE SPOKESMANREVIEW

- T

16

Main

SPECIAL 16

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW ARCHIVE

A crew dressed to clean up ash from Mount St. Helens arrives on May 24, 1980, nearly a week after the eruption.

CLEANUP

car in nearby Torrejon de Ardoz.

Mayor Lope Chillon Diez, a socialist, blamed right-wing activists.

“The car was parked outside the mayor’s home.”

Proof, perhaps, that we were beginning to move on?

Continued from 15 minutes, immense dark clouds were reaching thousands of feet into the air and spreading out in all directions.

“The mushroom cloud of ash soon grew large enough to block the sun over much of the surrounding area. Smoke appeared to escape not only from the top of the mountain but also from a vent in the side – but I saw only smoke, no fire.”

The Bordens watched for about half and hour, then stopped again on Interstate 5 near Kelso to watch nature in action.

It “was a fantastic, exhilarating experience,” he wrote, “like seeing the ocean for the first time.”

Back at home, the city had declared an emergency, local schools were closed, the city buses switched to a limited schedule, flights in and out of Spokane International Airport were canceled, and a Red Cross shelter was set up in the field house at Lewis and Clark High School.

And the weather forecast said this: “Somewhere beyond the gray is considerable cloudiness today. If the day dawns with more of the ash fall and darkness occasioned by Mount St. Helens’ eruptions, neither the weather nor the time may be apparent.”

That afternoon, the Chronicle headline declared “Ash Monday delivers anxiety.”

An unbylined story on the front page described a region at a standstill, “blanketed by up to an inch of ash on the ground and choked by a stubborn cloud of suspended particles that made breathing difficult, driving nearly impossible and just plain living an unpleasant experience.”

That day the Chronicle also talked to local health officials. “Potential health hazards from the volcanic ash covering Spokane weren’t fully known today, but cautious medical authorities continued to recommend that residents avoid the particulate matter as much as possible,” according to the story published under the headline, “Advice: Stay inside; health woes unknown.”

May 20

As worries mounted on St. Helens that a 200-foot high dam of debris keeping a swollen Spirit Lake plugged up might fail and threaten several small communities, and the number of missing people approached 100, attention in Spokane turned to clean up.

“County’s plea: Clean up mess now to reduce perils from volcanic ash” read the front page of The Spokesman-Review that morning.

“More than 100 million cubic yards of volcanic ash and flecks of hardened magma have wafted across Eastern Washington since Sunday, with accumulations on the ground running from half an inch in Spokane and North Idaho to more than three inches in the Yakima Valley,” columnist Chris Peck reported.

Today’s weather pun? “People who survive today’s weather will have true grit.”

And for a bit of perspective? The headline on one of the newspaper’s editorials that morning read: “We’re better off than Pompeii.”

There is that.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle also turned its attention to clean up,

May 23

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW ARCHIVE

Among the lawmakers greeting President Jimmy Carter to Spokane in the aftermath of the Mount St. Helens eruption included, from left, Idaho Gov. John Evans (facing camera), Washington Gov. Dixy Lee Ray (center), U.S. Rep. Tom Foley (background) and Spokane mayor Ron Bair (behind Carter). with photos of locals clearing streets of the ashy debris. The paper also reported that a 200-truck convoy was set to leave Missoula loaded with “perishables” and bound for the “ash-whitened Inland Empire.”

What allowed this was the reopening of Interstate 90, as well as some other highways, including 2 and 395.

Sheriff Larry V. Erickson said cleanup was going well, but he was keeping an eye on the weather forecast, which said a light rain was possible.

“My best guess is that it’ll be the end of the week before we get anywhere with cleanup,” he told the Chronicle. “I don’t see much possibility of lifting of the state of emergency before sometime late in the week.”

May 21

The pushback was well underway, as evidenced by the lead headline in The Spokesman-Review on Wednesday: “ ‘Emergency’ – Is sheriff crying wolf?” Local businesses, it seems, were upset they were being kept closed.

Sound familiar?

The S-R noted, “The thrill was gone out of sitting at home, and indications popped up all over Eastern Washington’s most populous county that businessmen and the public don’t consider Mount St. Helens ash an emergency at all.”

As local taverns opened, and store owners declared all was well, Erickson urged people to hang tight for another day: “We are trying to take every action that we can to protect the public health and safety of the citizens of Spokane County.”

The Chronicle, the afternoon paper, had the big news of the day: President Jimmy Carter had declared a major disaster for the state of Washington and was en route to Portland, where he would meet with state and federal officials, including Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, Rep. Tom Foley and Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus, a former and future

governor of Idaho. The next day, he was scheduled to survey the volcano via helicopter.

May 22

On Thursday, The SpokesmanReview reported that President Carter was planning a stop in Spokane later that day, accompanied by Foley and Sen. Warren Magnuson, during his tour of the Mount St. Helens devastation. The plan called for a 30-minute visit to see agricultural areas.

Elsewhere on the front page, the paper reported that the community was lurching back to life: “Spokane’s grueling four-day siege of cabin fever began to ease Wednesday as public officials recommended opening of stores, resumption of mail delivery and full schedule bus service. Schools are to reopen Tuesday.”

Meanwhile, staff writer John Kafentzis reported that while the “dust situation improved slightly Wednesday,” particulate levels “remained more than 100 times higher than normal.”

Ron Edgar, a chemist for the Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority, continued to advise caution. “If you can avoid it, don’t go outside,” he said.

On Wednesday, particulate levels were recorded at 3,000 micrograms per cubic meter, “considerably lower than the 35,000 microgram readings collected Monday.” The article noted that levels of 875 micrograms or higher are enough to cause an air pollution emergency declaration.

Chronicle staff writers Bill Morlin and Doug Floyd were on the presidential visit. “What I’m doing here in Spokane is obviously to learn as much as I can about the effects on Eastern Washington and northern Idaho and parts of Montana where the fall of ash has been severe.”

Also, in the bottom right corner of the front page, was this story: “Blast destroys car “MADRID (AP) — An explosion early today destroyed the mayor’s

The next morning, Rick Bonino had the Review’s lead story on Carter’s visit. The president said that while federal dollars would be made available to aid in disaster relief, state and local officials should be prepared to shoulder some of the costs. He also verbally agreed to Idaho Gov. John Evans’ request for a disaster declaration for the state’s eight northern counties.

On the dust front, the improvements from Thursday’s 1/2 inch of rain were proving to be short lived.

Winds returned Thursday afternoon, kicking up more of the dreaded ash.

“Although we have had rain in the area today, all citizens must wear face masks because volcanic ash remains in the air,” Sheriff Erickson said in partially extending a limited state of emergency. “This is for the citizens’ own protection because the danger still exists.”

The Chronicle’s lead story that afternoon was from the Associated Press, but had a local angle: “Spokane pair survive flight into eye of volcano.”

Keith and Dorothy Stoffel, both geologists, had been in Yakima the night before, where Keith Stoffel gave a speech in which he predicted that any eruption of St. Helens would involve its north flank, based on the large bulge that had grown in the mountain. (He was correct.)

The two secured permission from government scientists to take a flight around the mountain. They took off from Yakima at 7:50 a.m. that Sunday morning.

After a few passes around the mountain, they flew over the crater to change their flight path. When they were right on top of the mountain, they looked down and saw the north side begin to give way.

“We were almost directly over it,” Dorothy Stoffel told the AP. “The pilot dipped so he could get a better view.”

Then they saw a massive column of ash heading right for them and they got out of the area as quickly as they could.

“The whole thing reminded me of an atom bomb,” she said.

Dorothy Stoffel retold that story to The Spokesman-Review in December, in advance of the opening of the “Mount St. Helens Critical Memory 40 Years Later” exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

Inside the paper was a commentary by Tom Koenninger, then editor of the Columbian newspaper in Vancouver. The body of staff photographer Reid Blackburn had been found 7 miles from the mountain, where he and his car were buried in 7 tons of ash. Blackburn, 27, was not shooting for the Columbian that day, but was on assignment for National Geographic and donating his services to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“Our anguish for Reid is deep as we go about our job of covering the story of Mount St. Helens and the other major and minor stories that are grist for every daily newspaper,” Koenninger wrote.

“We ache. For Reid was one of us.”

- T

17

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 17

- T

18

Main

SPECIAL 18

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens sends a plume of ash that blotted out the sun in parts of Washington and North Idaho. The ash fell like snow and drifted as deep as 2 feet. It crushed crops, halted transportation and caused schools and businesses to close.

For Spokesman-Review photographer, the St. Helens eruption remains seared in the memory

By Christopher Anderson FOR THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Editor’s note: In May 1980, Christopher Anderson was a staff photographer at The Spokesman-Review. He shares with us his recollections of covering the monumental story of the Mount St. Helens eruption.

In most everyone’s life they will experience an event so overwhelming that it defies comprehension.

You just have a hard time wrapping your brain around what is happening in front of you. For me, that event was early in my career at The Spokesman-Review when Mount

St. Helens exploded on a nice sunny Sunday morning.

Up until then my work as a staff photographer was pretty typical.

Chasing crime and fires and covering local sports, working days, nights and weekends recording all types of events for the paper and for history. Then Mount St. Helens blew up. Who would believe a volcanic eruption could happen in Washington state even though all those peaks in the Cascade Mountains are part of the Ring of Fire?

The Ring of Fire that circles the Pacific Ocean and is made up of volcanoes?

Now you know.

We had been covering the “burps

Right: One year after the eruption of Mount St. Helens the landscape is still scarred with shattered timber and a deep covering of ash and mud.

Above: Chuck Nole is framed in a helicopter windshield displaying the plume of Mount St. Helens during a search and rescue mission.

and belches” from St. Helens over the months leading up to May 18, 1980. Some steam would blow out the top, or some mudflow would dribble down the side. The Spokesman would charter a small plane out of Felts Field and fly a reporter and photographer to take a look at the action.

My boss called me that Sunday and said there was a plane at Felts waiting for me but no reporter available and just fly over to see what was going on. The pilot could drop me off in Longview if it was anything of importance.

So off I go to Felts, and we head off. As soon as we get to altitude and get a few miles out of town you

could see the huge cloud of ash pouring out of what used to be the top of St. Helens. We had to fly north around Wenatchee and Mount Rainier and then south down the coast to come in from the southwest. The torrent of ash and debris was blowing northeast and heading directly to Spokane. Right where I had left my car and home with the windows open. Thankfully, a friend rescued my dog.

The entire horizon was filled with the eruption and everything was a shade of gray. No color. No beautiful forests or lovely lakes. No backwoods roads or logging camps.

Total destruction from the mountain blowing the top 1,300 feet off and throwing out 3.7 billion cubic yards of debris at temperatures above 600 degrees. The mountain literally turned to liquid and everything downhill, downwind and downstream was buried in a mudflow estimated to be over 500 feet deep. Fifty-seven people died.

I was looking at a vertical stream of junk rising 15 miles into the air, and the ash was rolling and boiling like it was alive. An estimated 200 square miles of timber was blown over like a giant hand had swept over the forest laying trees down in perfect symmetrical waves. It looked like I was going to be staying at the mountain for few days.

We landed in Longview, and the pilot left with my black-and-white and color film while the Spokane newsroom hunted up a rental car. I drove that car like I stole it and I made sure to take out the supplemental insurance but didn’t tell the rental company I planned on running it up the side of an active volcano. I had $20 in my pocket, no change of clothes and no idea of where to go or how to get around

See ANDERSON, 19

- T

19

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 19

First person

WHEN VOLCANO COMES CALLING Overnight jaunt turns into a rush to get home

By Jim Allen THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

LIBBY KAMROWSKI/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

A BLAST FROM THE PAST Dorothy Larsen holds a photograph that she said was taken by her uncle and aunt, Arlen and Mary Larsen, the day that Mount St. Helens erupted, May 18, 1980. Handwriting on the back of the photograph indicated the photo was taken three miles from the mountain at 8:20 a.m. (the eruption actually began just after 8:30 a.m.). Larsen believes the photo may have been taken in Toutle, Washington, though the landmarks no longer stand; she found the photograph when cleaning out her china closet.

PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

The mud and debris unleashed by Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, clogs rivers and streams, knocking out bridges and closing every road in the downstream flood.

ANDERSON Continued from 18 the roadblocks. I started at Interstate 5 and worked through the side roads and even some areas of no roads. Huge trees were being carried down the mudflow that had overwhelmed the rivers. Bridges acted like dams with mud and debris piling up against them. I had to drive to Portland to develop and transmit photos at the Associated Press bureau. I raided their lunchroom for food and bummed some film. Then back to the mountain.

The next two days were spent at the Longview Airport and thank God for the National Guard. Its helicopter crews were up and running immediately after the eruption. The Guard did search and rescue for a day, but it was obvious nobody could survive the force of that eruption. The next few days I hooked a ride on several of their flights to get closer images and show the efforts of the National Guard. There were a few people camping or hiking in the area and were far enough away to miss the blast but had to be airlifted out of all the fallen timber and ruined roads.

People who escaped the initial blast were wandering into the airport staging area to get disaster help.

Virtually every single one of them looked dazed and confused and just having difficulty wrapping their brain around what just happened to them. Stories of driving 80 mph down winding forest roads and just running for their lives. Just drop everything, grab the dog and run like hell. Lots of head-shaking and 100-yard stares.

Back in Spokane the Sunday eruption had turned day into night … cars drove with headlights on and the streetlights came on at noon.

Everyone was wearing masks and clearing the grocery shelves of toilet paper and beer. The highways were closed due to blowing ash, and 1,500 travelers were stuck in Moses

Hillsides even 10 or 15 miles away from Mount St. Helens show trees blown down by the force of the May 18, 1980, eruption.

Lake. The airport was closed and the storm sewers were choked with ash as people hosed down their houses and yards. Car air filters clogged quickly, and one tire store sold over 2,000 filters in a few days.

I finally got the first flight out of Portland and got back to Spokane five days after what I thought was going to be a scenic flight over with a few photos and back home by lunch. Yeah. I had to muck out my car that was still parked at Felts and clean out the house from ash blowing in open windows.

Since that day I have gone back to St. Helens on all the usual anniversaries – 5, 10, 20, 25 and 30 years. I have hiked into the areas with U.S.

Forest Service staff and geologists as they study the world’s largest test lab. It was unreal to see boulders the size of basketballs that had been thrown miles from the crater. Several friends have hiked up to the rim; the Johnson Observation Center is quite informative.

You can stand there and look directly into the crater, which is big enough to hold the entire downtown Spokane core. You can see the mudflows and how the trees are growing again. You can see the elk and hear stories about fish coming back into Spirit Lake. You can do all these things, and still today it is hard to wrap your brain around the violent force of Mother Nature.

For Bill Anderson and his traveling companions, the first hint of trouble came from the oddly gray skies south of U.S. Highway 2 near Creston, Washington.

The morning of May 18, 1980, had dawned bright and sunny, yet something seemed off, recalled Anderson, who also wrote a three-page memoir about the adventure.

Things would soon get more confusing on a weekend that began in Spokane on a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon.

Leaving their young children with a babysitter, Bill and his wife Judy piled into their car, picked up friends Dennis and Margie Riechmann and set off on Highway 2 for a 65-mile drive west to Wilbur, Washington.

The occasion was Wilbur’s annual “Wild Goose Bill Days,” a change of pace from Spokane’s Lilac Torchlight Parade scheduled for that same Saturday night.

After sleeping at the home of Dennis Riechmann’s father in Wilbur, the foursome awoke to sunny skies. With Memorial Day only two weeks away, they visited the Wilbur cemetery to pay respects to the Riechmanns’ relatives.

Setting off for home at 11 a.m., the travelers noticed that while the northern horizon was clear blue, dark clouds began to fill the skies to the south.

And not your typical cumulus cloud, the foursome noted. They turned on the radio, but got only static.

“Are we in for some kind of storm?” Anderson asked the group. “Nothing to worry about, right?”

Ten miles later, hunger and curiosity brought them to Deb’s Cafe in Creston, the regulars mixed with the visitors and discussed the storm to the south.

Moments later, in walked the owner, Deb Copenhaver, a two-time world saddle bronc riding champion with a gift for understatement.

“Our ears perked up as (Copenhaver) calmly informed some friends of his that the lights are on in Yakima,” Anderson wrote.

Apprising the stunned expressions in the café, Copenhaver look around and said, “Oh, I guess you hadn’t heard: Mount St. Helens blew this morning at 8 a.m.”

Not the types to overreact, the Andersons and Riechmanns ordered lunch and looked out the north-facing windows and a sky of blue.

Nevertheless, the food was consumed faster than usual. “We paid our check and walked out to the car, and oh, my goodness,” wrote Anderson, who now lives in Western Washington. “The eeriness of it all!”

As they jumped in the car, the foursome saw a southern horizon that was almost black.

Anderson wrote that “The motherly instincts of Judy and Margie quickly surface.”

“Get us home, Bill,” they said in unison.

En route home, the travelers observed the strange behavior of the cattle.

“They were so confused, and then they headed to the barns for milking even though it was late in the morning,” Anderson said.

To the west, the grayness was overtaking the blue sky, while the southern sky had turned coal-black.

By the time they reached Spokane, Anderson wrote, there was only a “peek hole” of blue on the northern horizon.

Traffic piled up as the ash-storm halted the annual open house at Fairchild Air Force Base, but parents and children were reunited by 2 p.m.

“It was a weekend to remember,” Anderson said.

CONTACT THE WRITER:

(509) 459-5437 jima@spokesman.com

- T

20

Main

SPECIAL 20

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

Born and raised between the Columbia River and Mount St. Helens, Spokane writer Jon Gosch is a national award-winning journalist, novelist and editor for Latah Books. His novel “Deep Fire Rise” was honored as a 2019 Spur Award Finalist by the Western Writers of America and was ranked one of the top 75 best Pacific Northwest novels of all time on Goodreads.

“Deep Fire Rise” was inspired by Gosch’s brother and father, both longtime lawmen with intimate connections to Mount St. Helens. His father Vern, a retired Longview, Washington, police sergeant, helped arrange President Jimmy Carter’s security during his tour of the eruption aftermath; Gosch’s brother, Tim, currently works as a deputy sheriff on the south side of Mount St. Helens where the novel is set.

“Deep Fire Rise” published in May 2018, centers on Deputy Tom Wilson, who patrols the backwoods and rural communities surrounding Mount St. Helens. It’s the spring of 1980, and as the mountain rumbles to life Wilson must solve a horrific murder.

AN EXCERPT

‘Deep Fire Rise’ “Which way are we even headed?”

“Straight on through the trees there. I’ll let you know if you’re going the wrong direction.”

Doug shook his head and they went on into the woods. The path that had seemed like such a terror the night before was now a charming stroll. With the advantage of daylight it took but thirty minutes to reach Wilson’s truck. At first Doug would not get inside the vehicle, but after some brute persuasion he finally climbed in the cab wordlessly like a demoralized prisoner of war.

Wilson started up the truck and began making the turns back toward the highway.

Several miles along he slowed to a stop. An alder tree had fallen across the road and would need to be cleared away.

“I suppose you’re gonna make me drag that off the road,” Doug said.

“Now you’re getting it.”

Wilson stood a few yards back as Doug tugged the young alder into the roadside ditch. They were just returning to the truck when Doug paused and aimed his ear at the mountain which was hidden somewhere beyond the trees.

“What’s that sound?” Doug asked.

“Stop stalling and get in the truck.”

“Seriously. Listen to that.”

It began as any shush of wind, and Wilson began to take interest as the noise rapidly grew into what sounded like innumerable pellets being fired through the forest. Overhead, the crowns of the trees were bending and snapping, and above that the scant white clouds were turning crimson and gray. Then the forest was all rumble and roar.

They had finally begun to run for the truck when a hot black raging smog swept them up like puny ragdolls and body-slammed them into the road. Wilson hit chest-first with such an impact that his lungs caved. The cracks he heard seemed to be his ribs, but were in fact the firs crashing around him. He was gasping for oxygen when a tree fell upon his legs to vise him to the hostile earth. Next a scalding brew of mud and ash began to cover him and boil his flesh. He felt his ears stiffen and curl. So hot was the slurry that he could only imagine it was lava. Choking and burning and pinned to the ground, Wilson waited for his life to end as missiles of rock and glacial ice detonated around him in that alpine apocalypse. Somehow he hadn’t even heard the mountain explode.

Death must sometimes play coy, for Wilson was finally able to filter a few breaths from the ash-dense air that coated his mouth like talcum powder. With excruciating effort, he managed to lift himself up to his elbows and twist enough to see the tree that pinned him down. He struggled, but he could do nothing to make the tree budge. His legs may have been shattered. He wasn’t sure. His gun had blown off somewhere and his skin was roasting beneath a foot of fiery ash. Below him the ground shuddered, while up above the sky churned as thickly black as diesel exhaust. What further calamity might the mountain have in store, he wondered. In which torturous manner would he die?

Wilson began to shudder and moan from the agony of his burns when he heard the sound of crunching footsteps drawing near.

He shifted and found Doug’s ominous outline clarifying among the dark haze. A thin wind swirled the ash eastward just enough to accommodate some light, and then Wilson could see him clearly, the derelict looking like some wretched clay figure escaped from a kiln. Everything about him was gray, especially his hair which was coiffed up in grime. His clothes were in tatters. The exposed skin of his arms and neck and face was all charred and blistering.

Doug took several more steps

Spokane writer Jon Gosch is a national award-winning journalist, novelist, and editor. His book, “Deep Fire Rise,” is a murder mystery set in southwestern Washington.

COURTESY

and then loomed directly above Wilson. He was either smiling, or grimacing with pain, or both. A long moment of calculation passed between them as Wilson gazed up with morbid patience. He expected Doug to leave him where he lay. Or maybe even brain him with a sizzling hunk of the volcano.

“You look like you’re trapped,” Doug finally said.

Wilson awaited some clumsy coup de grâce.

“Tom? Can you hear me?”

“Yes. I’m trapped.”

Doug surveyed the fallen tree as he gagged on the choking ash. “It’s not so huge. I’ll see if I can move it.”

Wilson still thought it might be some kind of a ruse until the tree began to shift and slide down the back of his seared legs. The pain was astronomical, like a thousand bee stings every instant. Wilson shrieked and begged him to quit.

“Hang on,” Doug said. “I’ve almost got it.”

Doug squatted and lifted as much of the weight as he could manage. Even so, the bark and branches were scraping along Wilson’s calves which caused him to howl and clench his fists and dig his toes into the ash. At last the tree thumped to the ground and Wilson’s legs came free. Doug hunched over to hack out a dozen coughs that became laced with blood. Wilson rolled to his side and his right leg seemed to swing of its own accord. He slumped to the ground in despair. His femur had been fractured, and his knee was utterly demolished.

Doug had finally regained his breath and now he stared at his out-held hands, the skin peeled away and hanging from his fingers like the flesh of some rotten fruit.

“My hands are garbage,” he was saying. “My hands are garbage.”

Wilson’s truck lay bent and battered in the ditch. Even if the vehicle had been operative, the road was now intersected by hundreds, if not thousands, of fallen trees. That way was impossible, so Wilson and Doug agreed the best they could do for now was to relieve their burns in the creek. With great effort, Wilson was able to rise to one leg.

He began hopping along with Doug’s puzzling support, but it soon became apparent that the ash and debris made this mode of progress impossible as well. Doug went ahead with his ribboned hands flailing, and Wilson began to crawl.

It was a mere thirty yards to the creek, but the way was continually blockaded by an epic tangle of shorn and uprooted trees. The volcano had produced such an awesome lateral blast that even this many miles away only a handful of blackened firs remained standing in all the smoldering wasteland he could

see. The air smelled like sulfur and the cinders of burnt fir needles.

Wilson kept pulling himself along, inch by agonizing inch. His movements were stirring up the ash so much that his windpipe kept clogging and he would stop and gasp for any air. Halfway along he reached a cluster of downed trees that had to be traversed, and it was only the most profound desperation that kept him going, for the pain of it all was beyond reckoning. As he began to crawl over yet another tree, the touch of his hand caused the bark to ignite in flame. He reeled back as sparks rose from the log like nature’s black magic.

When at last Wilson reached the creek, he slithered down the bank and into the water like some broken lizard. What had only minutes before been a cold clear stream was now a lukewarm ooze the color and consistency of sewage. Though the water was not nearly as refreshing as Wilson had hoped, it did help to soothe his tormented skin. He arranged his body as comfortably as he could and then looked for Doug. Instead he spotted several elk fifty yards upstream that were also bathing their burnt hides. One of them was clearly dead. The others seemed well on their way. Wilson lay there in that riparian ruin watching endless debris floating past. Pumice, chunks of wood and trash, many dazed and floundering birds, a dead beaver. All the lifeless shards of the forest being conveyed in a muddy seep to sea.

Wilson began to hear Doug hollering at him from somewhere downstream. He wondered why he should even bother answering, but he finally shouted out his location. In a few moments Doug came gimping around the creekbend. He’d cleansed himself of much of the ash, and now his wounds showed all the starker.

His forehead hung open as if it were some frowning second mouth. His arms looked like two limp sausages left to blacken and shrivel in the pan. And his hands were indeed garbage. He splashed down next to Wilson in a silty pool and gazed heavenward.

“Look at that,” he said.

Half the sky was alive with sheets of red lightning that zapped and zizzed through the ash plume, a continuous pyrotechnic display that could out-awe a thousand celebrations of independence.

“I can’t believe it really blew,” Doug said as the ground again shook and rumbled.

Wilson coughed out half a laugh. “What the hell did you expect was going to happen?”

“I don’t know. Just didn’t think it would be like this.”

Neither the air nor the water was cold, but as they continued to bathe they each began to feel chilled. Soon enough their teeth

were chattering, and then their whole bodies commenced to shake.

“What’s happening to us?” Doug asked.

“We’re going into shock.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means we won’t last long if we just sit here.”

Doug looked from Wilson to the outgoing flow of the stream. “This creek could be a way out. If we follow it down it’ll lead us to the Toutle River and into town. You can float or crawl as far as you can, and I’ll go ahead and get some help. I think that’s our best shot.”

Wilson was surprised to find himself in agreement. They decided to rest for a while and then try their luck with the creek.

When they were ready, Doug stood and Wilson prepared himself for the grueling slog ahead. Then they heard a new sound, a growing rumble like that of an oncoming freight train. They shared a look of terror and began to instinctively claw back up the side of the bank, each of them stumbling and faltering in his own ragged fashion. And then it came growling around the corner, a turbulent mudflow unleashed by the mountain itself to remake the landscape as it gargled boulders and devoured whole stands of trees. Wilson and Doug were each bloodying themselves as they fought their way uphill, and it was by a margin of some few feet that they escaped the rush of the lahar as it snorted onward in steaming locomotion.

Afterwards they lay in the ash straining to breathe. Both of them were whimpering and fidgeting about in vain for a way to make the pain more bearable. Ash continued to dust them in their suffering, as though they were already inside that final crematorium. Both knew they could not endure.

“Of all the ways to die,” Doug said. “There’s no way we’re getting out of here alive.”

Wilson was not listening. He lay with his head in the crook of his arm envisioning Ellen and Maggie and his baby boy. So much joy that they would never share together.

The years would pass and the memory of him would fade.

Already he was fading.

“Tom?” How fragile this shell keeping death at bay. And what manner of emptiness awaits on the other side? He scolded himself for his resignation, but the will to live was ebbing away with every excruciating wave of pain.

“Tom?” “Mmm.” Doug gazed at him through his enflamed and ghoulish eyes. He too looked ready to die. “You were right. I did shoot them.”

See NOVEL, 21

- T

21

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

l

SPECIAL 21

EXPERTS’ANTECDOTES, DISCOVERIES SHARED Writer Eric Wagner brings to life the science at work at Mount St. Helens

By Stephanie Hammett THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Since before its historic eruption on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens has been an enduring source of fascination for science writer Eric Wagner. Growing up on the northwestern tip of Oregon in Astoria, Wagner never went long without seeing the mountain, often visiting on hiking trips with his parents. He still tries to go every year.

The mountain played an integral role in his education as he studied ecology in graduate school; the eruption of Mount St. Helens is “a classic example in the suite of examples that make up the narrative of ecological succession,” Wagner said. “It’s always in your mind.”

Wagner’s latest book, “After the Blast,” chronicles the eruption of Mount St. Helens and the groundbreaking effect it continues to have on the study of ecology to this day.

The account draws from the anecdotes and collected research of more than 40 scientists, most of whom have spent almost as many years studying the event.

Leading up to the blast, Jerry Franklin, one of the many ecologists that Wagner was able to interview while writing the book, had suspected that whatever happened at Mount St. Helens would be ecologically noteworthy, to say the least. Working in Central Oregon at the time, he gathered a team of researchers to study whatever those consequences might turn out to be.

What followed the eruption differed greatly from what any of these scientists had expected. First, the mountain erupted outward rather than mostly upward, resulting in unantici-

Buy the book

COURTESY OF BILL WAGNER

Eric Wagner’s “After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens” ($29.95, University of Washington Press) is available at www.uwapress.uw.edu, or order it through your local independent book seller.

While researching for “After the Blast,” Wagner attended several “Pulses,” a series of scientific retreats at Mount St. Helens, where scores of ecologists reunite every five years to resample plots they’ve been studying for decades, develop new projects together and share stories from the first years.

Wagner was particularly struck by this element of storytelling woven into the study of Mount St. Helens.

“There’s a real sense of oral tradition of Mount St. Helens, the way that scientists tell stories,” he said. “(Hearing) that sense of discovery ... reading about how they struggled to work and tackle it as a scientific enterprise. We have this received idea of what happened at Mount St. Helens, but seeing how the story got told and how it was all put together was what I wanted people to see.”

To some, an event as famous as the eruption of Mount St. Helens might seem

almost unnecessary to revisit.

But Wagner believes there is still a long way to go before the subject is exhausted.

“There’s a lot that’s new, there’s a lot that you don’t know,” he said. “Mount St. Helens is still dynamic. It’s not done or settled in the slightest.”

After searching around for a suitable epigraph for some time, Wagner accidentally stumbled across an Emily Dickinson poem that neither he nor his editor had ever read before that moment.

“I thought that was so apt,” Wagner said. “Here’s this thing that everybody knows so much about but you can still find a tiny little bit that hasn’t been talked about.”

The poem reads: “On my volcano grows the Grass / A meditative spot — / An acre for a Bird to choose / Would be the general thought — / How red the Fire rocks below / How insecure the sod / Did I disclose / Would populate with awe my solitude.”

Author Eric Wagner stands at East Mooring Basin at Astoria, Ore. pated lateral devastation.

When the summit and north flank collapsed, it led to an avalanche of debris that laid waste to hundreds of square miles of forest surrounding the mountain.

The kind of apocalyptic landscape that these ecologists would later report seeing from helicopters and with photographs led them to conclude that there was no way that any life in the vicinity could possibly survive.

“In one way that’s horrifying,” Wagner said. “But also, as an ecologist, that can be pretty exciting. The chance to watch something recover from time zero is pretty rare.”

Franklin’s working hypothesis, and that of many others, was that decades would pass before native plants and animals could totally repopulate the blast area. But when Franklin stepped off the rail of his helicopter and looked down, he saw not one but many small shoots of fireweed poking out of the ash.

NOVEL Continued from 20 Wilson had no strength left for anger. If this was the world, he thought, then maybe it was best to leave. “Since this is it, I thought you may as well know that you were right.”

“How?” Wilson rasped. “How could you do it?”

“I wanted to save them from their suffering.”

“You’re a liar. You’re a murderer and a liar. You did it for money somehow.”

“Not for money. It was mercy.”

“Mercy? Mercy?” Wilson repeated. “Who do you think you are? God? She might have gotten better. She might have been cured.”

“Someday maybe. But not now.”

Doug paused to clear his windpipe and gather more breath. “Pops always said that he didn’t want to grow old without Nana. He told me once that he couldn’t bear to watch her lose her mind. To wither away like that. He talked about doing it himself. He showed me the gun he would use. But he couldn’t do it. He wanted to, but he couldn’t do it. So I helped him.”

“He asked you to?”

Doug shook his head.

“Then you had no right. Even if he had asked, you had no right.”

“I see that now. And I know I’m going to Hell for it.”

“But you won’t. You’ll just die like everyone else. Without punishment. And Elmer will rot in prison for what you did.”

“He’s better off there than where he was.”

Wilson wanted to cry, but there was no energy for that either.

“Goddamnit. God damn you. I loved them so much. I loved them, and you took them away from the world, and now I have to die here next to you.”

“I’m sorry, Tom.” “God damn you.”

Doug tried to continue his confessional, but Wilson would

At first, the researchers thought they would only find evidence of colonization, “life creeping in from the edges,” but instead, they found survivors repopulating as well.

This included plants like the fireweed, but also small animals and amphibians, which had been hibernating under the snow and underground, that had been spared the eruption’s worst effects.

“That was the real epiphany, that even when an environment has been ‘heavily disturbed,’ there can still be survivors. To see that was to see everything that (Franklin) was expecting turned on its head,” Wagner said. “To realize that the way he had thought about the eruption, the way that he thought about how the biology would respond was completely wrong.

And I think that for him was just as exciting. To realize how wrong he was. To embrace that incorrectness and adjust from there was the real epiphany.”

not respond. And so they just shivered in the ash, waiting for their organs to fail. All was silence except the muted slurp of the mud below and an occasional fir cracking to fall amongst the others.

Wilson’s pain was still intense, but the worst of it all was the chill that had frozen its way into his very bones. He would be happy enough to die now if only he could find some heat. A fire, an extra jacket. He’d give anything to have but a little warmth. Finally, he began to drift in and out of consciousness as feverish dreams blurred the line between real and unreal.

He imagined he was at home, in bed with the flu. Blankets were up to his chin, but he was still too cold for someone had left the ceiling fan on high. Around and around the fan blades rotated, but he was too sick and weak to stand and pull the string. Whomp.

Whomp. The sound was maddening and growing louder.

How he despised this chill. He must reach the fan. Must rise and make it stop. He was lifting himself, straining to grasp the fan’s chain when he began to inhabit the actual world again and saw two dark-green military helicopters advancing above the other side of the creek.

Wilson waved pathetically and shouted out a long and hollow plea for rescue. The National Guard hueys passed and continued whirling down the valley. Wilson watched the helicopters recede until they had the sound and appearance of horseflies. Then he slumped back into the ash. Doug had made no effort to flag down the pilots.

“They can’t see us,” he said.

“They’re too high and we blend in too well.”

Some minutes passed and then one of the helicopters could be heard returning. It flew on their side of the creek this time, much slower than before. With the last of his energy, Wilson removed his jacket and swung it over his head

in weak circles. The helicopter drew near, paused, and made a tight hovering loop. Wilson watched the pilot point at them, and then the helicopter began to descend as its raucous blades churned up a flurry of ash. The skids made unsteady contact atop a balded knoll and two crewmen, one white and one black, jumped out and came tromping over.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” the white crewman shouted.

“I can’t walk,” Wilson said.

“What?” “I said, I can’t walk.” The black crewman was as tall and powerful as a heavyweight prizefighter, but even so Wilson was astounded to find himself scooped up and carried over the man’s shoulder. As they were heading back to the helicopter, he watched Doug scuffle with the other crewman.

“I want to stay, I want to stay,” Doug was screaming.

“You’re okay now,” the crewman hollered. “Stop fighting me. You’re going to be okay.”

“Let me die here.”

“Murph. Hey, Murph,” the white crewman called. “This one’s delirious. Find those restraints for me, will ya?”

When everyone was loaded, the helicopter lifted and buzzed down the valley. Doug had been strapped to his seat and he was glowering at the crewmen who were vigilantly searching for more survivors. Wilson looked like he’d been exhumed and resurrected and was dying once more. His vision kept dissolving into a blizzard of white, and between cycles of blindness he saw that the black crewman had leaned toward him to ask how he was faring.

“Water,” Wilson muttered.

The crewman helped him to take a few sips and then pointed out the window.

“You oughta see what almost got you.”

Mount St. Helens had been decapitated, and from its jagged neck bloomed a deathly gray cauliflower of ash and gas and pulverized rock. The stalk now

stood twelve miles high and it was flickering with streaks of blue and purple lighting. A slight wind had commenced to scatter the ashplume east, and the fallout was already darkening distant lands with what would soon become fertile new soil. To the north, Spirit Lake had been buried under two hundred feet of debris and then refilled with superheated pyroclastic sludge that simmered like the broth of a new beginning.

Beyond this so many trees lay in immense comb strokes that all of Portland and Seattle could be burnt and rebuilt and still there’d be timber left to spare. Overall, this previously green paradise now stretched mile after drab gray mile in monochromatic destruction, the only color provided by the occasional small fire.

The helicopter banked and the pilot picked up the Toutle River which was galloping at double-speed and looked like a flood of wet cement. The astonished crewmen pointed out homes that had been ripped from their foundations forty miles from the mountain and become newly mobile. There were barns and garages and livestock racing along, tractors and bulldozers and logging trucks drifting sideways or upside down. Two crazed horses were straining to stay afloat and they watched as one of them disappeared, resurfaced, and then vanished for good. Throughout the river, hundreds of salmon were constantly leaping in silvery flashes to escape the now scalding water, and as they approached the Cowlitz, a bridge became so overwhelmed by a logjam that it finally snapped and swiveled and flowed along like a surfboard with the rest of that unlikely flotsam.

“I never thought I’d see something so crazy as this,” the black crewman said. He turned toward Wilson and saw that he had slumped over and nearly fallen out of his chair. “Hey, buddy? Hey? Oh, man. Don’t go on us. Hey, buddy? Hey—”

- T

22

Main

SPECIAL 22

l

SUNDAY

l

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

WHEEL KEPT ROLLING

The Dizzy Chronicles, Part 5

BIG, YELLOW TAXI TOOK AWAY THE JAZZMAN

But St. Helens eruption made 1980 Hauser Lake gig memorable

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

By Carolyn Lamberson THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

He’d come here for a concert on a Sunday night. It was Wednesday afternoon when he finally left town.

The United Airlines flight from Spokane to New Jersey wasn’t going to happen, so Dizzy Gillespie did what more than one desperate person did. He caught a cab.

To Seattle.

He apparently was inspired by Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield, who also had been stuck in Spokane after Mount St. Helens erupted and buried much of Eastern Washington in ash. Hatfield had been in town to be the commencement speaker at Whitworth College (now Whitworth University) and was marooned here. Early on May 19, according to the Spokane Daily Chronicle, Hatfield called a taxi to take him to the bus station, apparently planning to catch a Greyhound out of town. Good thing he never made it the bus station, as the buses were canceled and Interstate 90 shut down. Instead, while en route to the station, Hatfield asked the cab driver if he and his legislative aide could get a ride to Seattle. The cab company agreed, and sent a husband-and-wife team of drivers, along with extra air filters, fan belts and masks, to drive Hatfield to Seattle via Highway 2. The fare? $425.

(By the way, according to the inflation calculator at savings.org, that $425 would be $1,423.91 today.)

A couple days later, Gillespie followed Hatfield’s lead and took a cab to Seattle, where he then caught a flight to Charlotte, N.C., for a concert Thursday, May 23.

He told Jet magazine in the June 12, 1980 issue that the whole divorce story had been a bad joke. “My wife is pretty mad about it,” he said. “She may put me out of the house because it’s hers.”

Despite the chuckles, he later added that he and his wife were again on speaking terms.

“After 40 years, it is too late to throw it away over a joke.”

By the time Asleep at the Wheel rolled into Spokane on May 18, 1980, it was a well-established and veteran band on the country-bluegrass circuit.

And 40 years later, bandleader Ray Benson still has a special reminder of a very memorable concert – a small jar of ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

The band was booked that night to play Gator McKlusky’s, a county-rock club at Hauser Lake. Getting to town was a bit of an ordeal. Getting out was, too.

In an interview this month from his home in Austin, Texas, Benson recalled he was pulling double-duty on that tour. The regular driver was out, so Benson was behind the wheel, he said. They were coming up from California, and after stopping in Portland to pick up a fiddle player, he said he remembers seeing Mount St. Helens in the distance.

“That’s the volcano that’s been in the news,” he recalls telling his bandmates.

After driving all night, they arrived in Spokane around 8 a.m. As they were unloading, he said, he heard a boom, “like somebody doing construction.”

He didn’t think much of it, and headed for his hotel room to get some sleep before the gig that night.

“I wake up at 2 in the afternoon, figuring I’m going to head down the show, and it’s dark outside and it’s snowing,” he said, laughing. “Oh my god, it’s 72 degrees and snowing.

What he hell is going on? I was freaking out.”

Soon he learned the boom

COURTESY OF AUSTIN CITY LIMITS

Asleep at the Wheel in an Austin City Limits performance in December of 1980. he heard was Mount St. Helens According to Christensen, erupting some 250 miles away. as the night wore on, the ash “So we go to play the show,” started to cause problems for he said. “We weren’t going to the club’s equipment, “but the let a volcano stop us.”

Wheel finished the show to a Getting there took some very happy but gray crowd.” doing. In 2010, the club’s operBenson said he didn’t have ator, Jim Christensen, told The any second thoughts at the Spokesman-Review about the time of doing the show. “I was challenge.

29 years old, and bulletproof.

“The Washington State Pa- And the folks were very aptrol closed (Interstate 90) and preciative.” some other highways; now I Like a lot of visitors to Spowas afraid we wouldn’t be able kane, the band was stuck in to get the band out of Spokane town. When the hotel “started and to the club. I called on a running out of food” after a good friend as devious and couple of days, the band dehard-headed as I and told him cided to try to drive to Seattle. of my trouble,” Christensen The group headed over the said. “He was up to the task and North Cascades Highway to immediately left for Spokane “avoid the cloud. I think it took using back roads and cattle 10 hours to get to the coast gotrails. He reached the band at ing that way,” Benson said. the hotel, loaded them up in They weren’t quite done the bus and set out once again with Mount St. Helens. on the back roads and cattle “About a month later, the trails through Spokane Valley, bus blows up, because all the around the back side of New- dust had gotten in and ground man Lake and through the it to a pulp,” Benson said. “And mountains, and the back way all of our speakers starting leading them to Hauser. blowing out one by one, be“I was pacing under the cause when the silica gets into awning out in front of the club the speaker, it’ll tear it apart. when finally I spotted my “We figured at that time, the friend’s red-and-white con- volcano cost us $25,000.” vertible in a huge plume of ash Still, he has plenty of good pulling into our parking lot humor about the experience. with the band bus following in He chuckles as he recalls that his rooster tail of ash.” somewhere in his photo col-

lection is a Polaroid of the band all wearing masks, “which nowadays looks kinda normal.”

Every time Asleep at the Wheel comes back to Spokane, “it’s really cool,” he said, that when he mentions that gig, there are always a couple dozen fans in the audience who let him know they too were at Gator McKlusky’s that night in May 1980.

“It’s one of the defining moments of my life, that’s for sure.”

So defining that his souvenir jar of volcanic ash is kept by his bedside. He collected it himself as the “snow” was falling.

“I had a mayonnaise jar and I set it on the air conditioner” outside his hotel room. “And it was full,” he said.

While this is the 40th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption, it’s the 50th anniversary for the band, which now includes Spokaneborn fiddle player Dennis Ludiker. Benson had big plans for the group this year, including new music and filming with the original lineup. “It all went to hell” with the coronavirus pandemic, he said. “March 7 was the day they were supposed to come in. But we’ll do it eventually.”

VIRTUAL EVENTS TUESDAY | 4 P.M. | SPOKESMAN.COM/BOOKCLUB

Former Washington Governor Christine Gregoire In conversation with S-R capitol bureau reporter, Jim Camden Her group is Challenge Seattle.... the Washington Roundtable are putting together for businesses to navigate the “new normal” of life after things start back up from the coronavirus shutdowns

BEST OF OUR LIVE NORTHWEST PASSAGES EVENTS

Tara Westover

Jess Walter

Eli Saslow

Craig Johnson

Rick Steves

Northwest Passages brought Tara to Spokane before her stardom soared. The New York Times named “Educated” one of the 10 Best Books of 2018.

Spokane’s own best-selling author didn’t disappoint a crowd that got a sneak peak into his next novel.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author shared “Rising Out of Hatred” and led a standing-room-only forum focused on solutions to hate in our community.

The line to get into The Bing to see the author of Longmire novel “Depth of Winter,” stretched for a block up Lincoln Street.

The TV host and travel guru speaks to audiences across the globe and wowed a sellout crowd at The Bing.

P R E S E N T E D

B Y

- T

23

Main

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

MAY 17, 2020

l

SUNDAY

Right: In Ritzville, Amelia Kramer works to get the ash off her sidewalk as a city employee uses a larger piece of equipment to get the street in order.

l

SPECIAL 23

Left: The ash was so heavy in Spokane, people were wearing masks on May 20, 1980.

JIM SHELTON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVE

J. BART RAYNIAK/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

A man waits for the bus in downtown Spokane on Sunday, May 18, 1980, at 3 p.m. The buses had stopped running due to the ashfall.

COVERED IN ASH

The Inland Northwest spent weeks, in some parts months, cleaning up after Mount St. Helens erupted

JIM SHELTON/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

Above: Keith Domina takes a break from cleaning up ash a day after the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Ritzville, one of the hardest hit towns in the aftermath of the eruption.

Right: Downtown Spokane was covered in ash in the hours following the eruption of the Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980.

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVE

- T

12

Main

Mount St. Helens as it appears today. On the facing page, Mount St. Helens from Spirit Lake in 1907. The volcano in Washington state’s Cascade Mountains experienced a major eruption in 1800, with smaller eruptions of ash from 1831 to 1857.

SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES