Volcano watch exercises Basin memories

Locals remember big blast of 1980 as Mount St. Helens watch continues

COLUMBIA BASIN — With all eyes focused on Mount St. Helens right now, the possibility of another impending eruption and the consistent bursts of steam from the volcano seems to be stirring up a lot of memories for folks in our area.

The Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 was calamitous for much of the Northwest, including the Columbia Basin.

For those who weren't here 24 years ago, were too young to remember or were not even born yet, it seems impossible that a volcano on the other side of Washington state could have spewed ash so thick that it looked like snow.

But the memories of many locals remain strong of the day the skies darkened and most of the Basin was covered in Mount St. Helens ash. The impact on our area was enormous and signs of that eruption remain today, from the telling photos which hang in local businesses to the layer of ash found just under the surface in any field.

Deb Shay, now records sergeant for the Grant County Sheriff's Office, was a dispatcher for the county when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980. She recalls working an 18-hour shift on May 18th of that year.

"It was just a very long day, and long days after that," Shay said.

"The phones just rang off the hook," Shay remembered. She said she received call after call from people wanting to know why it was dark outside and what they should do. "It was a scary time," Shay said.

But all these years later, Shay can remember some fairly humorous calls as well.

"The one that sticks in my head is this lady who called about her domestic ducks," Shay said with a laugh. "She wanted to know if they were going to be OK."

Larger livestock was a valid concern however.

"The livestock seemed to actually handle it fairly well," Shay said, adding that the bigger issue was getting the feed and water out to the animals because vehicles would get clogged up by the ash.

Shay said the recent volcano watch at Mount St. Helens is bringing back some of her memories of the big blast of '80, and that she's watching the news, and the wind currents, closely.

Back in 1980, she explained, "we had no warning to the extent that it was actually going to get to.

"This time we're a little more aware," Shay said. "We survived the worst of it. We can survive it again."

Rich Childress, owner of C & V Auto, was working as a car salesman at the Moses Lake dealership still owned by his father in 1980 and remembers the confusion about what to do with the ash after it had fallen.

"We were all kind of really afraid of the stuff," Childress said.

"We didn't know what to do with the stuff on top of the cars," he said. The dealership had been told the volcanic ash could scratch their shiny new inventory, but it was difficult to market the cars covered in ash. "It was kind of tough to represent the cars as being brand-new. We ended up washing it off," he said, adding that they also moved the cars around the lot by pushing them to keep the air filters from gumming up with ash.

Driving in the stuff wasn't easy, Childress said. "If you were following somebody you couldn't see 5 feet in front of you," he said.

Childress also recalled the National Guard arriving to help dispose of the ash. Residents were told to push the ash on their property toward the curb where the Guard would pick it up. Much of that ash remains in town, Childress said, with some located behind the abandoned gas station on Pioneer Way where a former 50-foot-deep valley was filled in with Mount St. Helens ash. The city of Moses Lake moved an estimated 2 million tons of ash following the eruption of 1980 and deposited it on 74 acres of dumping sites around the city.

"It was like a big bunch snow that wasn't going to go away," Childress said.

Mike Rosenow, post master of the Ephrata Post Office, was letter carrier in Moses Lake in 1980.

"No one knew what the ash was going to do," Rosenow said. But the mail still went out.

"We just did our job," Rosenow said. "You know the old saying, 'neither rain nor sleet nor hail,' and I guess Mount St. Helens ash — that can be the addendum."

Ron PuFahl of Moses Lake was the assistant circulation director for the Columbia Basin Herald in 1980, and wasn't even in town the day the mountain blew.

"I was in Ocean Shores and heard it go off," PuFahl remembered. He said the explosion was huge, but that he and his family just kept clamming on the shore of the beach there that Sunday afternoon and weren't too concerned about getting back to Moses Lake.

They left for home on Monday and had no idea how severe the eruption had been until they reached North Bend. Interstate 90 was closed and PuFahl and his wife Phyllis had to travel back roads through Wenatchee to get into Moses Lake.

"When we pulled into town it looked like a moonscape," PuFahl said.

PuFahl said there were abandoned cars everywhere and the ash was ankle-deep. Field irrigation pipes ran down Third Avenue in Moses Lake as road crews tried to dampen the ash to make it easier to move.

"Your first inkling was to bundle up," PuFahl said. Though the landscape looked snow-covered, the temperatures were in the 80s that week.

"It was like living on the bottom of a barbecue," he described. "There was no color anywhere. It was like being in a monochromatic world."

PuFahl said there was no newspaper on Monday or Tuesday following the eruption, but by Wednesday the presses were rolling again. He recalled that the Herald rented a big moving truck and loaded up the papers into the back of the truck in order to make deliveries. He sat in the back of the truck with the door shut, wearing a dust mask, and still the ash was everywhere.

But most newspaper deliveries were made by foot or on bicycle. "You couldn't drive a vehicle unless it was an emergency," PuFahl said. "It was pretty darn horrible. It stopped Moses Lake in its tracks. Commerce kind of ground to a halt."

PuFahl said the ash lingered on for years to come.

"Anytime the wind would blow in Moses Lake you'd have just whiteouts everywhere," he said.

"It was something to live through," PuFahl said. "We wouldn't want to live through it again."