35 years ago today: the eruption of Mount St. Helens

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens

[shenmue]

1. I remember that

I was seven. The TV coverage was very scary.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I remember it too. Somebody named Nixon refused to move out of the way

& was killed. Not only was it the wrong Nixon, it was a decade too late.

Anyway, we shoulda paid more attention to it as a premonitory sign of impending doom. Reagan was elected later that year.

[Siwsan]

3. I think his name was Harry Truman

The old man who lived on the mountain and didn't want to leave. I guess he picked his exit plan.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. You're right.

Weird how my memory did that--

[Warpy]

6. I was a grownup. It was still scary.

My friends and I were all cat lovers who were irrationally pissed off at Truman for not getting his cats out, at least.

Ash fall didn't make it to New England, but sunrises and sunsets were interesting for quite some time after the eruption.

[markpkessinger]

8. Truman reminds me of those who have fallen prey to the climate change denjial propaganbda. . .

. . . The real movers and shakers behind climate change denial know, and have been able to axploit, a tendency that is very common among many Americans: a refusal to come to grips with information that is terribly inconvenient and unsettling, even the consequences of not coming to grips with it will be far worse than any 'inconvenience' they had imagined. Truman is a textbook example.

[Warpy]

10. I see him more as an old guy who knew something was going to kill him and soon

so he decided if the mountain blew up, at least it would be fast and he'd be in the place he loved most.

I saw the same thing with my parents when hurricanes threatened the barrier island they were living on.

[Politicalboi]

5. In SoCal it was raining ashes

I was 19 when it happened.

[project_bluebook]

7. I was working in a food production plant at the time

A trucker, who passed through the mess, gave me a cop of the fine powder. Still have it.

[malthaussen]

9. I don't know...

-- Mal

[central scrutinizer]

11. I was planting trees on the flanks of Mt. Hood

just across the Columbia - maybe 40 miles away. We heard it clearly.