On the ridge north of David Johnston sits Gerry Martin, a volunteer for WA’s ham radio-based monitoring team.
Over the airways, Martin describes the terrifying scene with what will be his last words. No trace of Martin's RV is ever found.
The video footage is from Ed Hinkle.
Reid Blackburn at Coldwater I fires off two sets of photos and hurriedly notes them in his logbook. He jumps in his Volvo to escape but is quickly caught. The blast blows out the car’s windows and buries him in ash. The heat ruins Blackburn's photos.
Three miles west of the mountain, Robert Landsburg pays a fatal cost for the shots of a lifetime. As the blast envelops him, he winds the film roll inside his camera and stows it.
Landsburg's photos later appear in National Geographic—static, heat marks, warping, and all.
Happened before I was born but it was still recent enough that I can remember a sense of the effect it had on people, and it didn't feel like something "from history" rather "from yesterday". But I'd never looked into it this much before.
I was too young when it happened for me to remember clearly but I had a powerful fear of volcanoes when I was small and I sometimes wonder if I absorbed news reports about Mt St Helens among other things
Harry's story is also moving. He loved living in Spirit Valley so much he refused to leave. I hope I'm remembering names correctly! We had a restaurant in Anchorage named after him.
