Mt. St. Helens 30th Anniversary Documentary | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

I lived just southwest of there about 45 miles when it happened. I remember heading to the toutle river to help fill sand bags as an 8 year old. For about 6 weeks after the blast(s) we had to wear protective masks, bra's on the air intakes of the cars, and basically have shoes off at the front door everywhere you went. We had 4-6 inches of ash in our yard, and spend a couple of days shoveling off wet ash from our roof. Had to completely replace the gutters.

If that blast had been aimed in any other direction that it was, some pretty big cities would have been in much worse shape. To this day, you can go up into the wilderness area for 100 miles around the mountain, and see the blast zone. Get up high, and you can still see the skeletons of the petrified trees sticking up as far as the eye can see. It's pretty cool to go do that actually. That ash cloud just suffocated everything for miles and miles. Crazy.