Wallace Braces For New Flurry Of Hollywood Flakes It’ll Be A Flashback To Mount St. Helens When Filmmakers Fill The Streets With Fake Volcanic Ash

Longtime residents of Wallace are no strangers to ash.

Most folks can’t forget the day 16 years ago when the sky grew dark and the air filled with a warm, gray snow.

So when “Dante’s Peak” filmmakers fill the streets with fake ash this month, most people should recognize the difference between Hollywood ash and the real thing.

“Does it look like the volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens? No. Will it look good for the movie? Yeah,” said Shoshone County Fire Chief Pat Allen.

Allen was working for the public works department in May 1980 when Mount St. Helens spewed ash across five states.

Now, as fire chief, he recently got a preview of the phony ash from Universal Pictures special effects crew members, who are anxious to prevent any panic when they blow ash around town.

The $95 million adventure movie is about a small town in Washington that’s threatened by a volcanic eruption.

Back in 1980, Wallace was far from the eruption, but the layer of fine ash from Mount St. Helens wreaked havoc on car engines and lungs for months.

“The ash we had here was like flour,” Allen recalled. “This stuff is essentially the same stuff they use for blow-in insulation.”

Still, Allen said he hopes it won’t blow around too much and clog his fire engine air filters.

The biodegradable movie ash is made of cellulose, gypsum and sawdust that will be treated with a fire resistant material, according to the production company.

Creating the volcanic ash scenes involves “the biggest non-digital, non-computer oriented stunt” in the movie, said publicist Peter Haas.

Haas spent Friday spreading the word on the non-toxic and fire resistant qualities of the material.

“It’s basically to put everyone at ease,” he explained. “It may seem ominous for a night.

“We want them to know we are looking at all their concerns.”

Haas couldn’t say exactly when the ash scenes would be filmed, nor how many days it would take to film them.

Some scenes involve the use of blowers and a helicopter to make the ash airborne. In other scenes, crews will use ash-sprinkled foam over wood planks to simulate piles of ash.

Universal Pictures hired Environmental Reclamation of Idaho (ERI), a local company, to monitor the ash and handle the final cleanup. The material may be hauled to the landfill, or mixed with soil in the Bunker Hill Superfund site.

The ash will be cleaned up every day after filming, according to Universal Pictures’ “Ash Management Plan.”

The daily cleanup will be handled by an “ash management team” armed with brooms, rakes, hoses, bags, a dump truck, Dumpster, Bobcat, vacuum truck, water truck, road squeegees, spill berms, sewer covers, leaf blowers and wet-dry vacuums.

Haas said the airborne ash should occupy only about one city block during filming.

Nelson Morris, Shoshone County chief deputy sheriff, said local agencies aren’t concerned that residents will panic when they see the ash.

“Everyone will know it’s fake,” he said. “There will be cameras and everything.”

Morris, too, remembers driving through 4 inches of Mount St. Helens ash on his way home from Orofino 16 years ago.

“We struggled along at 15 to 25 miles per hour,” he recalled. “You couldn’t see. It was like thick snow, only it was black….”

, DataTimes