The Day The Sky Went Dark
Gene Fierce was spending the weekend with his family at Marshall Lake, north of Newport, when the ash started to fall. The family had no phone, no TV and no radio at their cabin.
“Nothing could have convinced me that we hadn’t gotten into it with the Soviets,” Fierce said. “I was shaking all over. We were just sick at heart.”
It was May 18, 1980. A black cloud was stretching over the Inland Northwest. It wasn’t a nuclear attack, but the remains of Mount St. Helens.
The southwestern Washington volcano had finally exploded after quivering with earthquakes for eight weeks. The cloud that rose from the eruption contained 1.4 billion cubic yards of pulverized rock - enough to block out the sun and turn day into night.
Fierce wasn’t alone in his fear of a nuclear war. It was just one of many uncertainties that day, as hundreds of thousands of people experienced a phenomenon few generations ever see.
Today’s IN Life section offers a sliver of memories from that day 20 years ago - the day Eastern Washington turned into a moonscape from Ellensburg to Spokane.
In Monday’s editions, The Spokesman-Review will take a look at the mountain itself, which some scientists thought would be barren of life for 100 years.
Then beetles and plant seeds drifted in on the wind, and a remarkable recovery began.