Mt. St. Helens popped her cork at 8:32 a.m. PDT on May 18th, 1980. I was working at the telephone company as an operator at the time. In fact, I plugged into the board at 8:30, just two minutes before she blew.

Bulletins went out on the radio and on television asking people to stay the hell off the telephone lines because they were needed for emergency calls. But that didn't stop them. Within half an hour after the news went out that the mountain had erupted, the phone lines were jammed. No calls could get through. There were about fifty operators in Unit 5 at the time, and our boards were inundated with people complaining that their calls wouldn't go through and asking for operator assistance. Almost all of these calls were in the nature of "How are things out your way, Aunt Martha?" Real crucial! Genuine emergency calls simply couldn't get through, and there was not a damned thing we could do. I think these people probably have about the same number of brain cells as the people who want to climb up the mountainside and peer down her throat when an eruption is imminent. Or the people who walk out and examine tidal pools when the water recedes prior to the arrival of a tsunami.

Interesting to note that the mountain is behaving almost exactly the same way it did prior to the May 18, 1980 eruption. They keep saying that they're not expecting anything that big this time, but. . . .

When Mt. Baker, east of Bellingham, Washington, started rumbling and venting steam somewhat prior to Mt. St. Helens stealing Baker's thunder (so to speak), an interesting bumper sticker began to appear on Bellingham. It said, "Vote No on Mt. Baker Eruption!" Shortly thereafter, the rumbling and venting subsided.

Whoa! As I sit here at the computer listening to my marvelous Tom Swift electric radio, I hear that they have just recorded an earthquake under Mt. St. Helens' close neighbor, Mt. Hood. The geologists are saying that there is no relation, but hey! Both mountains are in the Cascade chain, and they're part of the so-called "Ring of Fire" that encircles the Pacific rim. How can they NOT be related?

Fasten your seat belts.

Don Firth