Tag Archives: Mt.St.Helens

Let’s Talk About: Mt.St.Helens & Ritzville

by Donna Phillips

The Spokesman Review,  Wednesday, May 21, 1980

“Once a quiet little agricultural town, Ritzville has been turned overnight into a Sahara of volcanic ash, and the last refuge for thousands of travelers trapped on the roads Sunday when Mount St. Helens violently erupted.

“While the rest of Eastern Washington received only 1/4 of an inch to one inch of ash, Ritzville, sixty miles southwest of Spokane, was buried under 4 to 6 inches of the fine debris. In spots, the ash has drifted as high as two feet. The city is in a state of disaster.”

Lynn Krogh and I had a delightful field trip to Ritzville recently and I took this picture in the railroad museum. This is a scene of downtown Ritzville! I did first think it was snow. Then I read the blurb. 

Remembering this day, as many of us do, I learned that the total ash spread over an area of 22,000 square miles with far-away Oklahoma and Minnesota receiving some. Before compaction by rainfall, the total ash deposited was equivalent to a football field piled with ash 150 miles deep. 

Ritzville, with 2-4 inches, and Yakima, with 4-6 inches, and little Lind, with 6 inches, were the hardest hit Eastern Washington towns. Ephrata and Othello each received 3 inches. Google states that Spokane received one-half inch but my memory surely remembers more than that. 

What are your memories of May 18, 1980? Even if you were not living in Washington then, did the news impact you or your family? 

Let’s Talk About: Remembering Mt.St.Helens

by Donna Phillips


If you were living in Washington on Sunday, May 18, 1980, do you remember what you were doing? I was walking to church on that sunny day and remember hearing what I thought was a sonic boom. (Fairchild AFB is just west of town.) An hour later, I fled home and was among thousands of Washingtonians wondering WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING?

At 8:32 that morning, Mt. St. Helens erupted as the result of an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale. Here’s what happened:

  • Eruption lasted 9 hours
  • Nearly 230 square miles of forest were destroyed
  • The explosion blew a crater 1968.5 feet deep and almost 1 1/2 miles wide from rim to rim on the mountain’s face
  • The speed of the subsequent landslide was estimated to be between 70 and 150 mph
  • As much as 600 feet of debris were deposited in the nearby North Fork Toutle River
  • An estimated 7000 big game animals were killed in the blast
  • An estimated 12 million chinook and coho fingerlings and 40,000 young salmon were destroyed
  • 60 people living near the mountain were killed

I remember gathering my family close, including my future son-in-law. I remember them playing RISK for hours. I remember waking up Monday and Tuesday morning to everything coated with white ash….. and nobody knew how dangerous it might be to breathe or to our cars. Spokane, among many eastern Washington cities, stood in shocked stillness. 

Now, 45 years later, we still see white streaks in the banks along I-90 when we head west. And I wonder how many baby girls born that day were named Helen or Ashley???
Will Mt. St. Helens blow again? She is considered the volcano in the Cascades most likely to erupt again in our lifetimes,  and scientists expect it to erupt again though the timing and magnitude are uncertain. (So says Google.)