May 18, 1980: The Day the World Went Dark

By Randy Haglund

There are certain dates that you never forget because of a momentous event. November 23, 1963, July 20, 1969[i], September 11, 2001. We all know where we were when….

If you lived in the upper left-hand corner of the country in 1980, the eruption of Mount Saint Helens tops the list because it was downright apocalyptic.

It started out as a beautiful Sunday morning in Spokane. I drove my mom to the early service at Hillyard Baptist Church. Afterwards we picked up my shut-in grandmother, who came for an afternoon of dinner and a game of Scrabble, just like every Sunday. She lived in a trailer home in my aunt and uncle’s back yard, with a wheelchair ramp attached to the entrance.

“What are you doing out here?” My uncle Jimmy called out to me as I wheeled grandma down her ramp to our car.

“Taking grandma over to the house.” Obviously.

“Don’t you know we’re all gonna die?”

I assumed he meant sooner rather than later. Jimmy was a doomsday-er. Not a half-glass empty guy, he was more of a glass-fallen-over, fell-off-the-table-and-broke-into-a–thousand-pieces kind of guy.

Taking the bait, I asked, “What do you mean?” I helped my grandma into the car while waiting to hear his latest pronouncement.

He took a drag from his cigarette, and gestured with an outstretched arm. “We’re all gonna get buried in ash.”

We knew he referred to Mount Saint Helens. It had been rumbling for a couple months, with earthquake swarms and occasional spits and spews of ash. After 123 years of slumber, it had woken up, and seismologists were telling us to prepare for the “Big One.”

But “buried in ash” wasn’t something anyone predicted—except Jimmy the prophet of doom. We lived in Spokane. Nothing ever happens here. Everyone has some natural disaster that frequents their region. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis…. Not Spokane. When it comes to acts of God, we kind of like to think He leaves us alone. Besides, the old mountain rumbled 250 miles from us. I wasn’t worried.

I didn’t know what to say in response. “Oh.” I just shut the car door and tried to ignore him.

“I’m not kidding,” were his last words as we pulled away.

From the back seat mom said, “Turn on the radio. Let’s see what Jimmy’s babbling about.”

Every station buzzed with the news. While we sang the chorus of “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” the Old Saint hurled her fiery guts up yonder. Reports were coming in that the north face of the mountain had blown wide open, causing massive mudslides and cataclysmic flooding in the area. An enormous ash plume rocketed skyward.

And it was heading our way.

Now this was exciting! We might just see an act of God yet! Looking to the southwest as I drove crosstown on Wellesley, a dark cloud peeked over horizon in an otherwise cloudless sky.

When we got to the house I wasn’t interested in Scrabble or even dinner. I climbed up on to the garage roof to get a better view.

An ominous black apparition inched our way. I brought my boom box up with me and spent the afternoon watching the approaching sinister cloud and listening to news reports.

As the day wore on, it started to grow dark. When tiny gray flakes began to fall, I came inside to watch from the front window.

By mid-afternoon it was darker than night. I couldn’t even see the neighbor’s house across the street. The ash began to build up like snowfall.

Working the day shift at the Union Pacific railroad, dad always got home on Sundays about 4:20. We watched for him, but there was no sign.

My mom worried.

It was nearly five when we thought we made out a car going past our house, but we couldn’t be sure if it was my dad’s Ford Pinto.

It was.

Visibility was so poor he couldn’t see the house from thirty feet away! We flicked the porch light off and on and he backed up, parked at the curb and came up the walk. Brushing as many flakes off as he could before stepping in, he told us about the harrowing experience coming home. He couldn’t see other cars or even traffic lights at all and thought he might get t-boned at any given intersection.

We all began to worry if Uncle Jimmy might be right. After all, even a false prophet can be right once.

The surreal, other-worldly nature of the event reminded me of the ninth Egyptian plague. Would we ever see the light of day again?

Mom made the sofa up for grandma to stay the night. Or, maybe longer. Would all this ash clog up our car’s carburetors and render them useless? How safe was it to even go outside without a respirator?

After midnight, I finally retired to my basement bedroom. I was dismayed when I realized I’d left my window open and found a pile of ash on my dresser and floor. Closing the window was difficult because ash had accumulated around the frame. I cleaned it up as well as I could and crawled under the covers, wondering what the next day would bring.

On Monday morning I peered out the window to see that it hadn’t been a bad dream. Two inches of gray ash covered everything. No one knew what to do with it. Businesses and schools were closed. I went out with a bandanna over my face and hosed off the cars, driveway and patio. But the lawn and everything else was still covered. Now what? It’s not like it was going to melt away like snow.

For three days we saw almost nobody. But then everybody got used to the world being gray and realized that it was harmless.

Tragically, fifty-seven people died as a result of the eruption, and over 200 homes were destroyed. In Spokane, we got off easy. We only had to deal with a couple inches of ash. But at the time, it was spine-chilling, not knowing what the future held.

Forty years later, it’s clear that in our fair city we were barely even touched by the finger of God. But we have a story we can tell our grandchildren. Anyone who was here at the time can tell you where they were the day the world went dark.

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Where were you the day the world went dark?

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[i] Read my story about the Apollo moon landing One Small Step for Man.