30th anniversary of the Inland Northwest's latest defining moment

[dsn]

Ground she's movin' under me
Got ya tidal waves out on the sea
Sulphur smoke up in the sky
Pretty soon we learn to fly
--Jimmy Buffett, Volcano

The Inland Northwest is a fairly large hunk of land centered around Spokane, WA, and extending into Idaho. It's gone through quite a few defining moments: floods, forest fires, copper wars and mining disasters. This isn't about any of those.

On May 18, 1980, there was a 5.0 earthquake in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens. It managed to cause the volcano to erupt, spewing ash over a multistate area.

It was a Sunday. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Fairchild Air Force Base held an open house every year. (I think they have stopped; I certainly haven't heard of one and I read the paper every day, so I would have if it was there.) The 1980 open house was on May 18. It was always a popular event. They had flying demonstrations, static displays...they also brought lots of other things out there. They brought the Budweiser Clydesdales out there a lot of times. Anyway, my family and I were going to see the open house for the very first time.

The road from Spokane out to the air base was a two-lane asphalt strip with somewhat steep shoulders at the time. We could see black clouds in the distance--we figured it was just going to rain its ass off, like it does every year in May. We also could see more cars going back toward Spokane than were going to the air base. As we got closer, we noticed lots of Air Force people out in the road, yelling "the air show is cancelled, the volcano erupted, go back to Spokane as fast as you can. This we did. By the time we got back to Spokane, the ash had started to fall. We drove the remaining 60 miles to St. Maries without stopping, and by the time we got there, the sky was thick with gray dust.

Now my girl quickly said to me
Man, you'd better watch your feet
That lava comes out soft and hot
You better lova me now or lova me not
--Jimmy Buffett, Volcano

There wasn't any appreciable lava from this eruption, just ash. School was closed. In St. Maries, the only businesses that stayed open were the grocery stores and the auto parts stores. They announced very quickly, "do not drive unless you absolutely have to; the ash will destroy your engine if it gets in there because it's very finely powdered rock." The police were changing their air filters every day and they had planned to change their oil every four days. After Mr. Stancil removed the drain plug on the first cop car (we had two) and wound up dropping the oil pan to get the sludge out, they started changing oil twice a day. Interestingly enough, people with Volkswagen Bugs were able to drive: old Bugs have an oilbath air cleaner consisting of a pan full of oil and an element made of excelsior--wood shavings. If you washed out the excelsior in gas and changed the air cleaner oil every day, you were good to go.

After the ash stopped, the first thing everyone wanted to do was to go outside and sweep their cars off. Oops! Wrong answer! It was so abrasive it was stripping the paint off everyone's cars. The weatherman on Channel 2 was real specific: gently RINSE the ash off your car if you don't want to damage the paint. By Wednesday pretty much everyone had decided they didn't care about the paint on their cars and was sweeping the shit off. If you can imagine a form of snow that never, never melts, you know what this was like. And this was before Rushbo had global warming to blame on Al Gore, so we got a LOT of snow. We were just sick of it.

We eventually got back to school in time for the last week. Eventually life did return to normal. The ash had been hauled off--if you come out here someday, I can take you out in the woods and show you where there's still ash, but in the cities we'd gotten rid of it. Eventually the ash cloud got up into the stratosphere, where it managed to go all the way around the earth.

It's strange to think it was 30 years ago. Anyone who was up here when the volcano blew can remember it like it was yesterday.

[gateley]

1. "Anyone who was up here when the volcano..."

You're so right. I was getting chills reading your post and I always read every article and watch every bit of footage I come across as voraciously as I did when it was occurring.

[gateley]

2. And welcome to DU, dsn!

:hi:

[cherokeeprogressive]

3. Skyfest 2010 is scheduled for July 24-25. n/t

[dsn]

4. I don't know if I'd want to go

I can still remember looking at my little town and thinking "it's always going to look like this."