I was working for Ma Bell as an operator (one of a number of miscellaneous day jobs I held from time to time) on Sunday, May 18th, 1982. I had just plugged in (8:30 a.m.) and two minutes later, Mount Saint Helens, a couple hundred miles south of Seattle, blew. It had been gurgling and rumbling for some time, and geologists had been watching it pretty carefully. Mt. Baker, in northern Washington, had done the same thing not that long before (triggering bumper stickers in Bellingham, not that far from the mountain, saying "Vote NO on Mt. Baker eruption!"). Baker finally stopped rumbling and venting steam, so it was expected (hoped) that St. Helens would do the same.

But no. At 8:32 a.m. on May 18th, she blew. There came what sounded like a loud rumble of distant thunder that made itself heard inside a relatively soundproof building, and all the operators looked up from their boards. The day was pretty clear outside, no sign of a thunderstorm. But within a couple of minutes, the entire telephone system was jammed. Despite the fact that bulletins and emergency advisories were going out over the radio and television telling people to stay off the telephones in the hope that emergency calls could get through.

The vast majority of calls were in the nature of "Wow! I'm watching it on TV! Isn't that something!?" and "How is it out your way, Aunt Martha?" People kept dialing operators, wanting emergency interrupts because they were getting what they thought were busy signals, when actually it was a similar signal, but much faster, which meant "busy circuits." Too many calls for the system to handle. Not even the operators can do anything about that, so even if it had been an emergency call, nothing could be done.

Which meant, of course, that real emergency calls couldn't get through either!

Operators are supposed to be polite to customers, but on that day, just plain rude was about the only way one could handle some people. "Look! Even if Aunt Martha is in trouble, there's nothing you can do about it anyway. So do what the emergency agencies are telling you to do and stay off the phone!"

Helluva day at Ma Bell's Skunk Works!

The following day, when I went out to my car, parked on the street in front of my apartment house, my car and all the others were covered with a light dusting of greyish ash. Upon close examination it looked like a myriad of tiny crystals. One of the bits of news earlier that morning mentioned that most of the ash-fall had gone East (Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon really got dumped on, literally), but that some ash had blown north. The news item warned that the ash (looking like mere dust) was extremely abrasive and said not to try to wipe it off because it would scratch the finish of your car. Just go ahead and drive it and let it blow off.

Pretty interesting couple of weeks. It took St. Helens a while to simmer down. Still burps and gurgles from time to time, but nothing like that Sunday.

Don Firth