I can hear a certain person saying "It's not my responsibility."

I've heard stories of scientists and many people not making it back after the blast. Back in the 80's this was the big incident that everyone was talking about - because it resulted in huge consequences for people and various communities.

I was home in Spain, my uncle Chuck was flying the power lines for GE close to Mt. St. Helens. He radioed in a report when he saw the first plums of ash. He was ask to fly closer and get some video of what was happening.

The ash was so abrasive, it ate the turbine blades of his engines, did so much damage they were not even cores good enough to rebuild. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage to a German built Helicopter.

Uncle Chuck flew with Yeager & Pard Hoover in WWII, flew in Korea and Vietnam, was sent to Sydney to teach the folks down under how to fly Helicopters and still had time to sail his 41' boat around the world.

Someone called BS on one of his stories in a Marina in France during a Paris Air Show. Uncle Chuck made one call and 2 hours a Messerschmitt Bo105 landed at the marina heliport to fetch us and take us to the Air Show. Turned out Uncle Chuck was the test pilot for MBB when it was certified for single pilot instrument operation and well loved at MBB factory. He was also a great cook, the Germans insisted that he make Tamales. Where they found Corn Husk and la harina during the air show, I will never know.

On a clear day Mt. St. Helen's cna be seen from where I live. I've hiked in the area in the last few years. Mos areas have recovered, but some areas of the blast zone are still clear.

In the video they said volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest are more prone to explosions... One would have eot look no further than Crater Lake (In Oregon) to confirm just how big those explosions can get..

Lived in Everett at the time, quite the double explosion!

I lived in Port Orchard!

That day I was camping at Fort Wordan at Port Townsend!!!

The next day we had a strange dust which was really light!!!

When I returned home there was that strange dust barely visible!

I had to go to Morton two days later were the volcanic dust was up to two inches on some of the logging equipment!

I had a vhs tape that showed the ash cloud that day, it has long vanished from Federal Way video store!!!

I worked in Tacoma, the dust did not really arrive there, sometimes a light dusting nothing to write home about!!!

On a day at my home in Port Orchard about two weeks or so later we got a brief dusting!!!

I had a Xmas tree glass bulb made of Mount Saint Helens volcanic dust, my first wife still might have it!!!

You can not fool Mother Nature!!!

Living on the other side of the US I heard of it

I was in Portland, Oregon, with ash covering everything, in car engines, clogging streams, and everyone wondering how much worse it would get. A doctor I worked with took a small plane up (before they closed the airways) and brought in amazing photos from above the cauldron.

I worked on the Mount Saint Helens District of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest at the time that the mountain blew......I was about six miles away as the crow flies from the mountain maybe even less than that I was in cougar the morning it blew...we were anticipating an eruption but it's far exceeded anything we could have possibly imagine. my how it changed things!!!!!the budget for our district went from just around a million dollars to 22 million the following year.yeah it was definitely some fun times.........

Saw it from the hills in Portland, looked like a large atom bomb was going off. Lightning in the clouds of ash, it was just a large column of ash going up into the sky. It just kept going up, most fantastic thing I have ever seen.

I was in Wenatchee, WA where ash was falling.

We were visiting my in-laws, in Surrey BC, & felt, & heard it.