The day a mountain came to Cheney

Sunday, May 18, 1980 was a warm, cloudless day in the Inland Northwest.

For Tom Trulove, that meant mowing the lawn. Pushing the mower in his front yard, the Eastern Washington University economics assistant professor and recently minted Cheney Mayor noticed a dark, ominous cloud along the western horizon about midday. Sensing the approach of a thunderstorm, he picked up the grass-cutting pace.

Not far away and fearing the same outcome from the advancing cloud, Jay Martin did the same thing. Not wanting to get rained on, the college student raced through his mowing duties, stowed the machine and jumped on his cycle and sped frantically up Elm Street to EWU's physical education complex, The Phase, to meet a buddy for some racquetball.

Earlier, Joan and Curt Hisaw had gathered their two young sons and jumped into the family car. The couple, both of whom had taken breaks from teaching at Cheney High School, wanted to get to Mt. Spokane for a picnic to celebrate Joan's birthday.

As they headed out, a neighbor asked if they had heard the news. They said yes, but felt they "were far enough away to continue our outing."

"This is it!"

That news was first broadcast to the world by a 30-year-old volcanologist perched six miles north of what was soon to become one of the biggest events of the 20th century.

David Johnston, a leading voice in warning of the dangers of Mount St. Helens, didn't want to be at the Coldwater II observation post that Sunday morning, but reluctantly agreed to switch with a friend and spend the night in the trailer observing the threatening Cascade Mountains volcano that rumbled to life March 27.

At 6 a.m., none of the instruments at Johnston's camp showed any indication of what was to come. All was normal around the 9,677-foot snow-capped mountain.

But at 8:32 a.m., a 5.1 magnitude earthquake under a large bulge on the north flank caused it to slide away in what was the largest landslide ever recorded. As the slide raced at 110-150 miles per hour down the mountain it was quickly overtaken by pyroclastic flow material of very hot volcanic gases, steam, ash and pumice now released from inside, violently exploding upon the world with a bang heard as far away as British Columbia, Northern California, Montana and Idaho.

The flow exploded laterally, quickly accelerating to 670 mph and briefly passing the speed of sound. Watching from six miles away, Johnston had just seconds to radio "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before he was swept into history along with 57 other people who lost their lives that day.

The flow eventually destroyed over 220 square miles of surrounding forest, with slide material extending 17 miles and burying the North Fork Toutle River Valley in an average depth of 150 feet. Forest and human debris choked rivers, destructively roaring downstream while a pillar of black and gray ash eventually towered over 80,000 feet into the sky - and blown by the winds began to roll over Yakima, Ritzville, Cheney and the rest of Eastern Washington.

Better look outside

Denise Mutschler's husband Felix was a geology professor at EWU. He was following events at Mount St. Helens with keen professional interest, but found himself teaching a class in the Southwest the day the mountain blew.

Denise was in Felix's Science Building office that Sunday helping out while he was away. Their son, John, was outside in a parking lot preparing to take part in a planned bicycle race, and Denise was heading out to wish him good luck.

"I could see through the glass doors at the end of the hall that the day had turned very dark and I thought it was too bad the weather was going to be unpleasant for the race," she said. "When I got outside, however, most of the day was bright and sunny."

That darkness despite the sun was the approaching ash cloud. Another effect occurred as the cloud passed overhead as the particles within reflected the ever diminishing sunlight, bathing everything in an other-worldly reddish hue.

Mutschler noted this when she accepted a friend's offer to drive west on Interstate 90 to meet the oncoming cloud.

"After a bit we encountered falling ash, and as the darkness began to surround us, we were treated to an apparent sunset in the east as the horizon behind us turned orange," she said.

At Eastern, Martin's racquetball game was interrupted by someone who said they had better look outside.

"Leaving the court to peer out, we could see the streetlights had come on at three in the afternoon and ash was villainously falling like a calm, night snow," he said.

Told to leave, Martin and his friend jumped on their bikes and raced home down Elm Street past EWU's campus, kicking up rooster-tails of ash as they went.

Not far away, eighth-grader Carol Van Kuren, now Carol Campbell, had heard what she thought was a sonic boom earlier that morning, finding out about the eruption on the radio later. After telling her mother she should stop hanging the laundry and bring it in, she had gone to her room and fallen asleep.

"I woke up at 4 p.m. to total darkness and it looked like it was snowing," Campbell said.

Racing home

The arrival of the ash cloud caught some people away from home.

Seeing the dark clouds approaching, the Hisaws decided it was time to head home from Mt. Spokane. Closer to Spokane their vehicle's radio reception returned and they learned of the eruption and oncoming ash cloud.

By now, aware of an approaching danger, authorities in central and eastern Washington were implementing disaster measures. One of these was closing down roads and highways, and the Hisaws ran into one of these police roadblocks at the bottom of Sunset Hill in Spokane.

"We were one of the last cars allowed to proceed up the hill," Joan Hisaw said. "On the rest of the way to Cheney, the ash was coming down all around us (and) we saw cars stalled along the sides of the road, with the roadway becoming slippery with ash."

The Hisaws eventually made it home, as did Mutschler and her friends, who curtailed their westward trip at Sprague because ash kicked up by traffic cut visibility to almost nothing. They made it back after discovering, thanks to another driver who had attempted to pass them on the interstate, that two cars traveling side by side "created a clearer view ahead."

By now, ash was pounding the region. And as a fine, talcum-powder-like white-ish layer began covering everything, authorities took action.

Making decisions

As the cloud slid by overhead and ash began to fall, Cheney Mayor Tom Trulove convened a meeting of the city's department heads. Decisions had to be made, but without any plans available to follow.

"At that point, we just had to innovate," he said.

One of the first decisions was declaring a state of emergency, which closed all non-essential businesses except for grocery stores - and the liquor store. There were unknowns about the ash content to be considered, safety supplies for employees to get purchase and a myriad of other things that wouldn't come into play until the ash had stopped falling.

Which would take awhile as the eruption lasted for roughly nine hours. According to the United States Geological Service, 540 million tons of ash fell over 22,000 square miles during this time period, eventually falling on 11 states. Within two weeks a portion of the cloud had circled the globe.

Trulove and his staff knew removal was needed once the cloud has passed. To prepare, snowplow blades were attached to city trucks to move the ash into piles. Another factor was keeping the city's storm drains clear, so fire hoses were deployed to assist with this.

City personnel spent a sleepless night preparing for what was to come, and with dawn, the task was evident. About an inch of fine power covered everything, creating a number of hazards.

Driving was one of these, with vehicles kicking up choking clouds of ash that was not friendly to vehicle or people. Trulove said they took steps to curtail this as much as possible, asking people to stay home.

Making it up

Clean up began, and one of the first things needed was to get residents to clear ash off the roofs of their homes and move it curbside for removal. With public schools and EWU classes canceled, Trulove said they had a pool of potential volunteers to help with the cleanup efforts, and student leaders at the university recruited students to help remove ash from businesses as well as homes.

Not only was it dirty work but it was also warm and somewhat muggy, with the air smelling of Sulphur. Trulove said they needed to find ways to keep the volunteers interested in sticking around as well as coming back to help with the process.

"We bought a lot of lunches," he said.

To help alleviate the drudgery, Trulove said he came up with the idea of a contest, dividing the city in half and putting each half under a city supervisor in a sort of competition. Another idea came from local judge Dan Maggs, who went to the liquor store and purchased a couple cases of whiskey.

"He hid the bottles around the neighborhoods and if you found one, you got to keep it," Trulove said.

As cleanup continued, Trulove said it became obvious the best way to remove the ash once collected was to wet it down so it could be more easily scooped up without blowing around. Water trucks were needed, but the city didn't have any, other municipalities weren't loaning theirs and attempts to rent them proved fruitless as companies were asking exorbitantly high rates.

Trulove said they had contacts with individuals at the cities of Nelson and Fernie, British Columbia, so they made a couple calls.

"They said we couldn't rent them (tanker trucks), but if we could come up and get them, we could use them without charge," he said.

A resident, Bob Stangel, had a low-boy trailer, Trulove said, and agreed to drive up to B.C. and pick up the tankers. Eventually, the city got cleaned up, and in fact did so in such a way that other area municipalities, like Sprague, asked Cheney crews for assistance.

"I learned a lot about managing in a crisis," Trulove said. "We pretty much made it up as we went."

Memories

Clean up wasn't the only thing that got made up.

With school closed for the rest of the year, the Hisaws turned their home into a co-op elementary school, emphasizing math and science with some fun, positive instruction and reading time.

"A special memory was the solar system hanging from the light fixture over our dining room table, with planets of different sizes, colors and distance that the children made and designed," Joan Hisaw said.

The ash proved to be useful as well, contributing to some high-yield farm and garden crops over the next few years. And it proved to be a very colorful additive to the potters' wheel.

"Some examples were for sale at Safeway, and I have a nice planter pot that I bought as a souvenir," Denise Mutschler said.

Trulove said the eruption showed how people could come together to use innovation and non-standard practices to solve a problem, much as what is taking place today with the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The difference comes down to visibility.

"At least with St. Helens, it was a visible problem where you could see a visible path to a solution," he added.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].