36 Years Ago Today – BOOM!

36 YEARS AGO TODAY - THE TOP CAME OFF

I remember seeing those old movies on Saturday where volcanoes erupted. The ones where the hero and heroine somehow always managed to survive and end up in each others arms at the end......staring at the smoking mountain in the distance as "The End" came up on the screen.

You know...the movies where volcanoes go off...and a few trees and old buildings get destroyed, but none of the main characters ever perish. You've seen them as well.

Because of that, when all the talk about Mt. St. Helens in Washington started up 36 years ago, a lot of people, me included, were like, "wow...this is kinda crazy, but everything should be okay, because it's out in the middle of nowhere, and the lava will just flow down the mountain...right?"

WRONG - When Mt. St. Helens blew...it blew...BIG. 1300 plus feet of the top of the mountain blew more than 15 miles into the air. Smoke, steam, hot ash, hot air all into the sky. Not to mention the shock wave that was caused by the instant displacement of all the air. 57 people lost their lives that day. 27 bridges in the area were destroyed. More than 200 homes buried in ash and debris. Huge trees flattened like match sticks for miles around the mountain. Scientists and seismologists monitoring the mountain from as far as 20 miles away were knocked to the ground with the blast.

I remember watching the reports coming in on the television and being shocked at the ferocity of the explosion and how fast it happened. I remember the fallout of the ash and the reports of the sky being darkened for days in the Spokane area and eastward.

I was driving when the news hit, when I got home I turned on the TV...and was shocked. Even at a young age, I was awestruck by the force of that explosion and the destruction it created.

Where were you and what do YOU remember?