A memory of the Mount St. Helens eruption 44 years later
Mt. Saint Helens erupted May 18, 1980, spewing ash and reducing the elevation of the mountain by about 400 meters, leaving a crater 635 meters deep. Ash spread across 11 states.
COURTESY PHOTO/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Guillermo V. Castaneda sent the Columbia Basin Herald these two samples of ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. The ash that landed in Granger, only about 60 miles away, is considerably coarser than that which inundated Moses Lake the same day. Castaneda wrote that he calculated the ash’s speed between the mountain and Granger at 45.2 miles per hour.
Guillermo V. Castaneda of Granger sent this poem to the Columbia Basin Herald in commemoration of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, which took place 34 years ago Saturday. At the time of the eruption, Castaneda was the director of the Migrant Health Clinic in Wenatchee and was in the process of setting up a community medical and dental clinic for migrants in Moses Lake, he wrote.
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