Saturday, May 13, 2000

By BUD MAY
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Editor's note: Among the heroes to emerge from the ashes of Mount St. Helens were local journalists who often risked their own lives in debris fields and mudflows to describe the utter devastation and its effect on the people of Southwest Washington.

One newspaper, the Longview Daily News, was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting in the months after the eruption.

A small-town paper (circulation 27,500) with a staff of only 29, the Daily News out-paced far larger newspapers.

Twenty years later, former Daily News reporter Bud May is still telling the story of St. Helens.

CASTLE ROCK -- My wife and I were asleep on a pleasant Sunday morning on May 18, 1980, when a relative called from Toutle about 8:40 a.m. to say Mount St. Helens had blown its top.

Looking toward the mountain from her home, she saw a huge black cloud, eerily punctuated by lightning strikes. Within a short time, plumes of volcanic ash rose thousands of feet into the sky.

At the Castle Rock Exhibit Center, Bud May sits on a diorama depicting the devastation caused by the 1980 eruption. May Mike Urban / P-I

I switched on the portable scanner beside our bed in time to hear a dispatcher in the Communications Center at the Cowlitz County Hall of Justice announce that an eruption of unknown magnitude had occurred.

Although my assignment at the Longview Daily News had been the police and court beat for 24 years at that time, I knew what our entire news staff would be doing the rest of that day -- and for some time down the road.

I didn't realize that the event would prove to be so serious that it would change our area's economy and quality of life for years to come.

Updated reports, each scarier than the one before, crackled over the scanner as Betty and I dressed and gulped down coffee. After touching base with my boss to let him know where I'd be, we walked down from our home toward the Cowlitz River, two blocks away.

We and other neighbors congregated for a time at the home of John and Sharon Kotera near the river where we would have a good view of what was to transpire.

Tense voices over the scanner reported that a massive mudflow was sweeping down the Toutle River valley, carrying trees, homes, cabins, livestock and heavy equipment as it rumbled toward Castle Rock. There were fatalities, but it was too soon to guess the extent of the death toll.

Sheriff's deputies hurried to evacuate people in the path of or near the mudflow. Some residents cooperated. Others refused, opting to take their chances and stay put. Dozens became isolated after numerous bridges and several sections of Spirit Lake Highway were destroyed. Helicopter crews rescued those who were unable to make it out on their own.

While still waiting for the mudflow to hit Castle Rock, we learned that the Washington State Patrol was closing Interstate 5 out of concern that the onrushing mudflow might take out freeway bridges and a railroad trestle spanning the Toutle River near its confluence with the Cowlitz River.

The sturdy bridges and trestle survived, but by then some of the debris had reached Castle Rock. Thousands of denuded trees, parts of structures, vehicles and personal belongings from destroyed homes began to enter our view.

We saw fish trying to jump out of the heated waters of the river, but they and other marine life were doomed.

Concern about a possible eruption started in late March, when bursts of steam and increases in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes within the mountain were reported.

Geologists, including David Johnston, for whom Johnston Ridge Observatory is named, warned that St. Helens was a ticking time bomb.

Some folks were convinced, but owners of dozens of cabins off Spirit Lake Highway about a mile below Harry Truman's lodge were upset that red zone restrictions prevented access to their properties. Skamania County Sheriff Bill Closner called May 15 to ask that I write an article stating that patrol officers would lead a caravan of cabin owners up the mountain on Saturday morning so they could retrieve valuables. If they wished to make a second trip Sunday morning, they would again be escorted.

Vehicles were lined up for the second caravan when the mountain exploded.

Strangely, the powerful blast heard as far north as British Columbia and in Southern Oregon was not heard in Castle Rock because of what experts termed "an umbrella effect."

May 18 will always be remembered as the day of the eruption, but the story lingered in the Lower Columbia River area long after reports of the death toll and devastation had become old news.

Managing Editor Bob Gaston, whose leadership with the support of (the late) Publisher Ted Natt brought the Daily News a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting of the Mount St. Helens story, recalls that the newspaper had only 11 city reporters when the mountain began to rumble.

Viewing even the comparatively mild early events as a big story, he freed up reporters from their routine duties so they could thoroughly cover everything that took place at St. Helens and the events' potential effect.

Between March 24 and Dec. 31, 1980, the paper ran 2,200 stories and published 500 photographs. Our coverage didn't end with the eruption. For many months after the event there were daily stories about how the loss of millions of board-feet of timber crippled the logging industry, costing many jobs.

My newspaper career spanned nearly 37 years before my 1993 retirement. I recall a lot of stories during that span, but none came remotely close to the eruption that claimed 57 lives, destroyed homes and changed our lives forever.

For several years the hurt of losing a beautiful recreation area where we once picked huckleberries, rented boats at Spirit Lake and enjoyed the use of a cabin belonging to relatives was constantly with us.

But something good also came out of the disaster.

Castle Rock has a rich history dating back to the area's settlement in the 1840s, but the town had no place to share that history.

A decade after the eruption, a small group of community leaders formed the Castle Rock Exhibit Hall Society. (May is a past president of the society).

With the help of businesses, volunteers and the city, we converted an old feed store into a three-gallery museum that we share with a visitor information center. (May and his wife work at least three days a week as volunteers at the Exhibit Hall).

Descendants of area pioneers provided scores of photographs and old items, which along with displays, exhibits and documents, tell the story of our area. Thousands of Mount St. Helens-bound tourists stop by before heading up Spirit Lake Highway.

My wife and I had long discussed what kind of volunteer work we could do in the community after retirement. Mount St. Helens provided the answer.