YAKIMA, Wash. – Inside the Yakima Valley Museum sits an exhibit, dedicated to Mount St. Helens and the historic eruption that occurred on May 18, 1980.
Mike Siebol, the curator of collections at the museum, is in charge of the countless artifacts relating to the day of the eruption. Those include glass jars full of ash, both commercially and privately collected and sold as well as pottery made from the ashes that fell.
Siebol, born and raised in Yakima, was 8 years old at the time of eruption. He was just sixty miles away enjoying a spring day at Camp Dudley on Rimrock Lake.
“I still remember hearing the ash… fall through… the branches,” said Siebol.
At 8:32 a.m., a magnitude 5.1 earthquake triggered the catastrophic collapse of Mount St. Helens. The volcano’s north face slid away unleashing the largest landslide in recorded history. While Siebol says he doesn’t remember the sound of the eruption, he does remember the first reports coming in.
“We only heard through radio communication that Mount St. Helens blew, and we were told to go up and pack our things,” Siebol recalled. “And the next thing that I remember is that we’re all in a caravan of single line of vehicles racing out of Camp Dudley and going back to Yakima.”
The United States Geological Survey reported that the blast sent a cloud of ash and debris 80,000 feet into the air, distributing 1.4 billion cubic yards of ash across the Pacific Northwest, covering 22,000 square miles.
As a result of the eruption, 57 people lost their lives, 31 ships were left stuck upstream, 27 bridges and 200 homes were destroyed or damaged, and nearly 7,000 big game animals were killed.
In the immediate aftermath, Siebol recalled the community of Yakima coming together to clean up.
“We actually cleaned up all our ash within two weeks,” said Siebol. “If you ever want to know where all that ash went from, all the streets, all the roofs, all the buildings downtown, they’re all at Chesterley Park.”
According to Siebol, if one were to dig down far enough at the park, you’ll find a layer of ash from the cleanup.
The USGS currently reports Mount Saint Helens to be at a normal alert level.
