We almost lost an LHA as well in Subic. All the ships were washing ash off the decks as fast as we could, but the LHA waited before commencing thinking it wouldn’t be as much as it was. By the time they commence clearing operations they were alreadying listing several degrees and straining their mooring lines. Ended up using the helo dollies as bulldozers to push it overboard as fast as they could.
We washed ash for 2 days straight in rotating crews. Electronic equipment was impaired and we continued to have issues with it for months afterward as the ash was so fine it couldn’t be properly filtered without shutting off the cooling completely - stuff was everywhere - I still have some of the larger chunks that hit me on the head.
I was on ST LOUIS (LKA-116) at the time and we were sent to Subic after the big eruption to help with evacuation so we missed getting ash blasted. After ST LOUIS was decommed in '92 I went to SAN BERNARDINO (LST-1189), which was at Subic during the big eruption. They were slow to put filters over their intakes and ingested quite a bit of volcanic ash inside the ship which caused problems with main engines and generators for a long time after. Doing fresh water washdowns two years after we would find ash still coming out of cracks and crevasses on the weather decks. It was literally everywhere.