Happy 30th, Mount St. Helens!
It was 30 years ago today that Mount St. Helens 'sploded.I was ten years old. As best as I recall, my mom was giving me a haircut while I was watching the Mariners-White Sox game from Comiskey Park on channel 11. The game was suddenly interrupted by breaking news of the eruption, with footage of ash-darkened skies and flooding rivers and thousands of fallen trees. It wasn't scary so much as freaky -- the kind of event where you just can't pull away from the nonstop TV coverage.
At home in Kent, we were about 100 miles upwind from the carnage, though in the following days there did seem to be a faint dusting of ash on our rhododendrons. I devoured the ensuing cover stories in Time and National Geographic, though I managed to resist St. Helens, the quickie exploitation disaster flick starring Art Carney.
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For more on Mount St. Helens, I'll throw it over to Wikipedia.***
Labels: Happy Birthday, Movies
posted by Steve @ 12:02 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
My husband Rick was raised in Spokane. He and his siblings played in the ash like it was snow! By their own admissions, they weren't the brightest bulbs back then...In Tacoma, we got a light bit of dust. I was kind of disappointed, actually. I wanted more drama than that!
On a recent trip to the library I found a KING-TV ad from the May 19, 1980 Seattle P-I, boasting that at 11:14 a.m., channel 5 aired a "live shot of the eruption during the Mariners-White Sox game, followed by continuous updates."
So I remembered it correctly, except for the TV station.
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