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They called it ‘a stone wind’.

I’ve been to St. Helens a few times in recent years. You’d be surprised at how much plant life has grown back. Yes, there’s a huge mountain with it’s side blown open in front of you, but there’s a lot of beauty in the area again.

This morning, I was remembering what I went through as a teenager in Spokane that day in 1980.

I had gone to Fairchild AFB for their then-annual Aerospace Day open house to close out the Lilac Festival week. I took Spokane Transit out there. After I arrived, I was going through one of the huge hangers and looking at exhibits. I came across a MARS (Military Affiliate Radio Service) ham radio booth. The guy was talking to someone in Randle, WA, not too far from St. Helens. hge was writing something down on a clipboard. When he finished, he put it up on the wall of the booth. It read “Mt. St. Erupted, 8:30 this morning. Top mile of the mountain is missing.” I thought that was cool, but didn’t think anything of it. After all, St. Helens was 200 miles away to the southwest of me. How could it possibly affect me?

I went on, looking at planes. As I walked around, I noticed that people were gathering near radios and boomboxes, listening to news reports coming out of the area. Someone had mentioned that the sky looked strange to the west. It looked like a far-of line of thunderstorms was approaching. At around 11:30, the public address system said they were cancelling the airshow part due to approaching weather. About 30 minutes later, thge base security threw up a security cordon around the SR-71, which had come up for a visit to the airshow. They attached a tug and started moving it toward a hangar. I asked an airman nearby what was going on, and he said “It’s to protect the engines from the ash”. Ash? Huh?

About 12:30, the PA announced that the base was closing due to the eruption and urged everyone to go home. I was in a pickle, since the bus to take us back wasn’t arriving for another 3 hours. The Air Force set aside some school buses which were going to take those who took Spokane Transit out to the base over to the Rec Center to wait for the STA bus to come get us. As I was sitting on the Air Force bus, I noted that the sunlight on the buildings around us looked different. I looked up at the Sun.

It was light blue. My stomach felt a chill like I’d never had before.

After a while, STA showed up and we boarded. As I looked overhead and to the west, it was pitch black. No lightning, just a blackness like nightfall. The driver got us out of the base to face bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way toward Spokane on Hwy. 2. The driver said he knew shortcut and we took it to get into downtown Spokane. As we were going down the Sunset Hill, I looked to the east. There was a thin line of orange light on the horizon. By the time we got downtown, there was no more light. They dropped us off, told us “you’re on your own”, and took off for the barn. I was stranded in downtown Spokane at 2pm, with the sky black as night, and stuff that looked like snow by smelled like sulfur falling from the sky.

I managed to get my dad to come down and get me. We went up to the Sambo’s on Division. My little transistor radio happened to be in the car, and I brought it in. People crowded around our booth to listen to news. Finally, the mayor ordered everyone to go home. Which we did.

We didn’t see daylight again until the next day, but it was overcast. We had one hell of a mess to clean up, and it pushed my graduation back a week. It was my first natural disaster (and not the last), and I’ll never forget it.