Tips on How to Cope with an Ash Cloud After a Volcano Erupts

Americans Should Prepare for the Breaking Up of the Pacific Ring of Fire

As of this writing, Alaska's Mt. Redoubt is threatening to erupt and perhaps send an ash cloud over heavily populated areas. If you're reading this after it erupts, most likely the eruption wasn't quite as significant as the single most powerful volcanic eruption within the U.S. mainland. On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens became the single most explosive and destructive volcanic eruption of the modern era and in the United States. While I was only nine years old at the time, it's still one of the most significant natural disasters I've ever experienced, even though I was 200 miles away from the mountain. Nevertheless, the ash cloud that emanated from Mt. St Helens affected everybody in the NW, my hometown included. But you can only imagine the chaos that ensued in places nearer the mountain where the majority of the ash hit.

Day became instant night.

If there's any more frightening aftermath to a natural disaster outside of destruction from a hurricane, tornado or earthquake, it's living in a town inundated with ash from a nearby volcano that's just erupted. If you were alive and paying attention in 1980, then you remember seeing footage on national or local news showing Portland, Oregon and all the towns in southern Washington State looking like a snowstorm had hit in the middle of the night, only with rush hour traffic trying to navigate through the chaos. Considering most people had never experienced an ash cloud blocking sunlight before, the preparation to survive an unusual natural disaster of this magnitude was non-existent.

Fortunately, my own hometown only received a light dusting of ash that made it seem all the closer having stunning views of the erupting Mt. St. Helens to the north, visible from the top of downtown tall buildings and at higher elevations. However, the immediate problem for those in Portland and SW Washington was just being stuck outside in the middle of the ash. When I see old footage of people walking out in a blinding darkness of ash falling everywhere and navigating through it in their cars, I wince at the lack of understanding we all learned later.