PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF SUNDAY, MAY 18, 1980 By Mary Schroeder, Cottonwood, California

THE DAY THE MOUNTAIN BLEW

We lived at the time in Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, about 150 miles north of Mount St. Helens. Sunday morning we got out of bed about 7:50 a.m.

8:40 We heard a sonic boom, then another and another. We went outside to see if we could understand what was going on. The booms continued at a rapid pace. The louder ones shook the windows and the house. The cows next door ran through the field. How many planes would it take to make so much noise? My pulse rate increased as I suggest to my husband that we could be under attack from the Russians!

8:45 My husband calls KIRO News Radio in Seattle to report the series of sonic booms. The reporter asks where we live and how far Sequim is from Mount St. Helens.

8:48 KIRO reports on the radio that the mountain has erupted. A mushroom cloud of ash and smoke is billowing 50,000 feet high. The mountain is only 9,600 feet high!

9:00 We grabbed the camera and left for the airport. The weather is good. We have only have 8 pictures left on our roll of film.

9:45 We are flying toward Seattle and can see part of the mushroom cloud. Other clouds lay at the base of the mountain and high clouds block the top of the pillar of ash, but visibility is good. We can see the Olympic Mountains and Cascade Mountains clearly. We tune in Flight Service on the airplane radio. A restricted zone is announced covering an area 20 miles west of the mountain and the whole eastern side wherever ash is present. The wind is blowing the ash over the Cascades in a path 80 miles wide. As we pass Mt. Rainier, we take a picture. It looks as though Rainier may be enveloped in ash at any moment, but it is just an illusion. The ash is moving behind the mountain into eastern Washington.

10:40 We pass into the area southwest of Mount St. Helens and the air around the base of the mountain is clear. It looks like an atomic explosion – curling, bubbling smoke and ash towering in the sky. The blackened sky reminds us of a severe eastern thunderstorm. We see lightening over the crater. Mt. Adams, to the southeast, which has looked pure white, is now blackened with ash. We take our last picture and are low on gas, so we head to the Toledo, Washington airport to refuel. We land, but no gas is available, so we take off for the Kelso/Longview airport. We are flying over the Toutle River and notice how muddy it looks. Then we see the logs – hundreds, no probably thousands of them flowing down the river. Many of the logs look fresh cut as if they came from a sawmill. Then we notice Interstate 5, no traffic. Various intersections are jammed with cars, but traffic has been stopped. Now we see why, the log flow is moving toward the I-5 bridge.

12:00 We landed at the Kelso airport, which is now buzzing with activity. News crews from CBS, NBC and the Seattle Times have been flying in and out all morning. I offer to buy a roll of film from a reporter, who was jamming a pack of 100 rolls in his camera bag, but he refuses. The state emergency team is planning to use the hangers at the airport for people who must evacuate their homes. Two men in the airport office are verbally kicking themselves. They were flying near the mountain when she blew and had left their cameras at home. The girls at the counter started cooking hot dogs for the growing number of people flying in. A large Beech King Air, turbo prop, landed and taxied up to the office. Men in suits stepped off and then came Governor Dixie Lee Ray. She had been flying around the mountain to check on the devastation. She is quite a governor.

1:00 Refueled, we take off from Kelso and fly above deserted I-5. Are we in a movie? This is very strange! The log flow has passed under the I-5 bridge with no apparent damage and is heading toward the City of Castle Rock. As we get closer, the logs pass by the city and will continue on to eventually meet the Columbia River in a few miles. At Kelso we saw sail boats and pleasure boats tied up in the river, which will surely be swept away. Behind the log flow is a river of mud. Logs are strewn along the shores of the riverbed. Over the radio we hear Flight Service closing larger and larger areas around the mountain to all aircraft. There are helicopters below us, planes to the right and left and above us. The mountain continues to bubble and boil, like black towering cumulus clouds. We head for home still not believing what we have seen.

2:10 We land at Diamond Point Airport and tie the plane down. We buy a six-pack of Bud from Dave at the airport store and tell him what it was like. At home we hear over the radio that the ash is 3” thick in some eastern Washington towns and in Yakima it was as black as night at noon. The ash is now reaching Spokane, 290 miles east of the mountain. Most eastern roads are closed as well as airports. In Packwood, Washington, the ash is so deep snow plows are clearing the roads. Many of the logs we saw charging down the Toutle River came from Weyerhaeuser’s logging camp that was completely wiped out. Now we are watching the news on TV to see what we saw and help us fully comprehend the awesome power of the mountain.