Remembering the day the volcano blew
Stephanie Massart, regent of the Karneetsa Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, stands in front of a display of books, magazines and newspapers all highlighting how local residents coped with the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980.
Charles H. Featherstone
Stephanie Massart, regent of the Karneetsa Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, holds up a small model of the Space Needle made of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980.
MOSES LAKE — It’s been 43 years since Mt. St. Helens erupted, spewing ash across vast swaths of the Pacific Northwest, covering towns, roads and fields of crops, and permanently changing the lives of many for days and weeks to follow.
“It was just everywhere. People put pans out. They were shoveling it,” said Stephanie Massart, the regent of the Karneetsa Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Moses Lake. “People were using wheelbarrows to put it out on the street and dump trucks would come pick it up.”
At one point, according to an old Columbia Basin Herald headline, the Washington State Department of Ecology investigated the city’s dumping of volcanic ash into Moses Lake itself.
“So we got in a little bit of trouble,” she said.
Massart was setting up a display just outside the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium for a one-day presentation by Eric Wagner, a biologist and writer who has been touring the state, talking about the immediate and lasting effects of the May 18, 1980 eruption. Wagner is the author of three books, including After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens, and spoke at the Civic Center Auditorium on Saturday at 1 p.m.
The display Massart was assembling included books, national magazines, a number of issues of the Columbia Basin Herald and the Wenatchee World documenting how people coped in the days after the eruption, as well as photographs from private collections and a small statue of the Space Needle made in Seattle from volcanic ash.
“We have art from the ash, many things were made, like ashtrays,” she said.
In addition, Massart there was a Story Corps booth inside the auditorium that would allow anyone to record their memories of the event for future archiving with the Library of Congress.
Wagner, a speaker with Humanities Washington, has been talking about how quickly both plant and animal life around the volcano itself recovered from the 1980 eruption, which killed 57 people and destroyed numerous homes and roads around the mountain.
“Everyone thought it would take ages for life to return to the mountain, but scientists who visited soon after were stunned to find plants sprouting up through the ash and animals skittering around downed trees,” Wagner’s Humanities Washington website says.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com
