Mt. Saint Helens was neither saint nor lady

By Paul Fugleberg

When folks woke up Monday, May 19, 1980, they found the lower Flathead and Mission valleys coated with what appeared to be a layer of powdered concrete. Of course, it was the fallout of ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington 24 hours earlier. And the stuff was still falling.

Schools and almost all businesses were closed for the day.

The anniversary of the May 18 eruption always makes me think of where I was and what I was doing.

Oddly, we hadn’t been around a television set or listening to the radio all day long. After church, we visited with George and Joann Hess and showed them through our newspaper properties in Polson and Ronan. Coming back to Polson from Ronan about 6 p.m., we commented that it looked like a rainstorm was coming from the west. The sky was gray and darkening.

After dinner at the Ancient Mariner restaurant in the Salish building, we came out to find a fallout of what seemed to be a gritty dust. “Must be a Palouse dust storm,” I commented. However, when we reached the house, the kids greeted us with, “Mount St. Helens erupted and we’re getting the ash here!”

Boy, were we ever! Five years later, dried ash was still detected in the shrubs in the yard.

Perhaps the area residents with the scariest experience during the eruption and its aftermath were Ruth Forssen, and her husband, the late John Forssen of Dayton.

It happened May 18 and 19, 1980, when the Forssens were returning from a visit with their son-in-law and daughter in Port Townsend, Wash.

Pat Paro, the Flathead Courier’s Dayton-Proctor correspondent, interviewed the Forssens about their trip home. Here’s a condensation of Pat’s story:

They left Port Townsend on the 8:30 ferry. Crossing Snowqualmie Pass, Ruth began to doze and John turned on the car radio to keep her awake.

They were soon both wide awake when the heard that Mt. St. Helens had erupted … As they descended the east side of the pass, they began to see dust in the air, and soon Washington highway patrolmen blocked Interstate 90 and directed them north to Wenatchee and US Highway 2.

Turning east at Wenatchee on US 2, they came to thicker and thicker dust, with traffic raising blinding clouds that sometimes made it necessary to stop completely. Soon after they passed Waterfield, the road was closed. A few miles ahead, at Wilbur, more dust-masked officers were encountered and told them they could go no farther.

But after an hour, traffic was allowed to proceed with Ruth, John, their car and all their trappings, including some fine Pacific Ocean driftwood and shells, becoming coated with a thicker and thicker coating of Mt. St. Helens.

At Davenport the half-dark turned all dark and they were stopped again, along with a hundred or so other travelers. The procession stood motionless in the main street of Davenport for an hour or so. Then the police let one car go every two minutes to minimize the problem of swirling dust. Ruth and John and the others proceeded along Main Street 30 feet at a time, and two hours later they were on their way to Spokane.

Determined to drive all night if necessary to get home, Ruth and John plowed through the dusty night.

But at 11 p.m. in Spokane, the atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife, and they gave up and sought out a motel, taking baths which must have come close to clogging the drains.

The next morning John dumped a cup of Mt. St. Helens out of the car’s air filter and they were off, ignoring radio and TV pleadings that all roads out of Spokane were closed to all traffic. Traffic was light and the dust became lighter, except for a quite thick pocket in the Plains area.

Proceeding directly to Polson they picked up their cat, Pizzicato, and dog, Waggy, at the veterinarian’s, and then headed home, the cat throwing up along the way.

All in all, the Forssens reported that they had never been so glad to see their little gray home on the west shore.

Remember what you were doing when St. Helens blew her top?