30 years...

[kengr]

I remember the eruption. Everybody else in the house was up at an SCA event east of Seattle, and more or less due north of St. Helens.

When the news of the eruption reached the event, everyone was offering sympathy to the folks from the Portland area. Because that's where everybody expected the ash to fall.

Lots of folks offered places to stay to the Portland folks. Especially folks from Yakima and the Tri-Cities. Both of which got hit with major ashfalls.

Wish I had clips of the news showing the snowplows fighting to keep roads clear in Yakima.

Oh yeah, took forever for the housemates to get home. A couple bridges on I5 got taken out by the mudflows. So they had to use the two lane highways along the coast. Mega traffic jam.

Comments

[my-real-head.livejournal.com]

That sounds awesome, in the sense of inspiring awe.

[kengr]

Well, there's footage somewhere from a time lapse camera that was off to one side of the blast zone. It took a series of pics that show the side of the mountain starting to bulge, then come apart.

Which is really scary when you realize how many cubic *miles* of rock that was.

And then when the winds finally shifted and Portland got some ash... I was working in a company that shall remain nameless in a class 1000 clean room. Which proved to leak.

Loads of fun cleaning. And for several years afterwards we had to use special gear at the entrance of the *building* to try to cut down on how much ash got tracked in.

[mistresscayenne.livejournal.com]

Happily I got here ten years later. So that means that I have been here 20 years in Oregon. About 18 of them in Portland!

Chrissy Michelle