Memories Of Mount St. Helens
By 250 News
Prince George, B.C. - The ash being blown into Prince George from forest fires burning to the southwest has brought back memories of a fateful day 30-years ago for more than one city resident...
Virginia Cyr was living in the East Kootenay community of Cranbrook at that time and was camping at nearby Wasa Lake with her three young children on the morning Mount St. Helens erupted, back on Sunday, May 18th, 1980.
At 8:32am pacific time, the north side of the Washington State mountain gave way and an ensuing volcanic explosion spewed plumes of ash more than 24-thousand metres into the atmosphere. (click here to watch video footage) Ash was recorded in Canada and 11 U.S. States.
Large flakes began falling from the sky at the campground, and Cyr remembers returning to her home in Cranbrook to find the windshield of a car in her driveway completely covered.
And the Prince George resident is not alone here in her memories...in talking with a store clerk about the local weather this week, the clerk mentioned to Cyr that she, too, had been recalling the Mount St. Helen's eruption. The woman lived in Bellingham, Washington at the time and distinctly remembers the large volume of ash raining down.
57 people were killed and thousands of animals died in the volcanic blast.
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Posted by: dnakamura on August 20 2010 6:19 PM
Funny you ran this story. Mt. St. Helens was the first thing I thought of this morning when I saw the ash.
I was living in Vancouver when Mt. St. Helens blew. I remember thinking how bizarre it was that ash could travel such a great distance.