[Leica] A Day in May 40 Years Ago

[Aram Langhans]

The 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.  I can hardly 
believe so much time has elapsed.  We lived in the small (pop 1100) town of 
Odessa in Eastern Washington at the time.  I was actually on a camera club 
field trip with the town doctor, pharmacist, and postmaster to Idaho and 
Canada.  We were in Nelson BC when we heard of the eruption earlier that day 
and had to drive back through some harrowing conditions the last 40 miles or 
so.  I have included two images of the ash cloud at about 1:30 PM on the 
18th that I did not take, since I was 300 hundred miles away.

The start here:
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Aram/AM/Darkness+from+ash-4.jpg.html

The cleanup took weeks.  The first day no one quite knew what to do.  Was it 
safe to be outside?  The news media did not have too much information.  Some 
of the photo kind of remind me of what we are going through now with this 
virus thing.  Masks were in order and our little town quickly ran out.  My 
parents in Seattle sent us some that we got as soon as mail started  up 
again.  Our first order of business was to dig out snow shovels and wheel 
barrows and shovel the ash off the lawns, drives and sidewalks.  The on the 
next day we discovered we needed to do the roofs, too, so had to repeat the 
lawns etc.  It was like snow that did not go away.  We were beat by about 
day 6.  Not sure how many roofs I did for folks that could not manage it. 
Then the National Guard came and we were glad to see them.

Enjoy the photos.  I have many more but don't want to bore you too much. 
Comments welcome.

Aram

Aram Langhans
(Semi) Retired Science Teacher
& Unemployed photographer

“The Human Genome Project has proved Darwin more right than Darwin himself 
would ever have dared dream.” James D. Watson