By lunchtime, the President had declared southwest Washington State a disaster zone and Federal help was on its way. The trouble with volcanoes, however, is that there are no half-measures, no wounded, no traumatized persons — and no witnesses. The fury of this type of assault on the planet is too formidable.
If you’re near enough to cast light on the actual event from a close-up position, your chances of survival are close to zero. It was no different at the base of Mount St. Helens on that Sunday morning…except for one big four- wheel-drive-vehicle that had been parked all night on the northwest shore of Spirit Lake. This contained a selection of sporting rifles, fishing rods, and four sportsmen, three of them local — one from Virginia.
The leader of the little expedition was Tony Tilton, a former attorney from Worcester, Massachusetts, currently President of the Seattle National Bank. Accompanying him was the legendary East Coast dealer of marine art Alan Granby, who had moved west with his wife, Janice, after a money-grabbing private corporation threatened to build a massive wind farm opposite their backyard on the shores of Nantucket Sound.
The third member of the party was another East Coast native, the eminent broadcaster and political observer Don McKeag, who had finally abandoned his show on a local Cape Cod radio station for a huge network contract that required him to live and work out of Seattle — the “Voice of the Northwest.”
The fourth serious sportsman in that accomplished little group was the big-game fisherman, duck hunter, and car racer Jim Mills from Middleburg, Virginia. They were on a weeklong hunting, shooting, and fishing trip, and they’d been camped by the lake all night, ready for an assault on the superb trout that made Spirit Lake their home.
There was one prime difference between these four and the rest of the sportsmen scattered around the lake in the warm summer months. Tony Tilton and his wife, Martha, had been cruising in the eastern Caribbean when the Montserrat volcano exploded in 1997, burying two towns, wrecking the entire south side of the island, and showering everything within 40 miles with thick, choking volcanic ash. Tony Tilton had stood on the foredeck of his chartered yacht and watched the towering inferno belch fire from the Soufriere Hills.
Etched in Tony’s memory was the speed with which the mountain unleashed its wrath upon the island. He had seen the blast, watched the roaring plume of burning ash and smoke burst upwards, hundreds of feet into the sky. Almost simultaneously, he had seen the great glowing evil of the magma begin its fatal roll down three sides of the mountain. A trained attorney, he had the lawyer’s grasp of facts, and the banker’s eye for the minutiae. In Tony’s opinion you had approximately fourteen minutes to get the hell away from that mountain or perish.
And now, twelve years later, on that early Sunday morning on the shores of Spirit Lake, Tony heard a strange and sudden wind, a
Less than twelve seconds later, he heard a dull, muffled roar from way up on the mountain, but again he could see nothing up the slopes through the fog. He heard the wind again, and another shuddering distant thump from the summit of the mountain. It was louder this time, but perhaps only because Tony was already on high alert.
That did it for the Seattle Bank President. He turned to Don McKeag and said sharply, “Get in the wagon, Donnie. And don’t speak. Just get in.” Then he yelled towards the tent
Alan Granby, a big man, but as light on his feet as the late, great Jackie Gleason, understood immediately. He and Jimmy had slept fully dressed and they both came scrambling out of their tents, alerted by the obvious tension in Tony Tilton’s voice.
The engine of the wagon was already running, and they both jumped into the rear seats. Tony hit the gas pedal and they burned rubber on the warm shores of the lake, heading west, through the short forest trail that led to Route 504. The trail was straight and relatively smooth and the wagon was moving at almost 70 mph when they heard the third explosion right behind them, followed quickly by another.
“What in the name of hell was that?” asked Don McKeag.
“Nothing much,” said Tony. “Except I think Mount St. Helens just erupted.” By now they were on the country road, which would lead north up to the town of Glenoma and the much faster Route 25. And all around them were strange glowing lights falling into the trees like a meteor shower.
But the brightness had gone out of the day. Alan Granby glanced at the sky. “If I had to guess,” he said, “I’d say this was the start of a partial eclipse of the sun.”
At that moment, they felt an earth-shuddering rumble beneath the wheels of the wagon, and a howling wind screamed through the forest, like a hurricane. Tony hammered the wagon up deserted Route 12, heading north and conscious of the burning debris beginning to litter the road.
“Let’s hope I don’t get into reverse by mistake,” he muttered. “I got a feeling anyone left back there might not make it.”
The miles whipped away beneath their wheels, and now the sky was darkening into a thick, high gunmetal- gray cloud above them. Yet through the rear window they could discern a terrible glow in the sky. In eleven minutes, they had put twelve miles between themselves and the lower slopes of Mount St. Helens. Up ahead it looked slightly brighter, and Don, ever the journalist, suggested they pull over after another couple of miles and take a look back at the mountain, and the fires, and the scorched earth they had somehow escaped.
“Any of you guys fancy a short hunting-fishing trip next year to Indonesia?” asked Tony. “You know…a nice little base camp on the slopes of Krakatoa…I’m getting to be a real pro at volcano escape…”
As Donnie spoke in measured, yet inevitably dramatic, tones, every fireman in southwest Washington State was engaged in fighting the fires along the periphery of the central blaze. It was pointless to even think about entering the interior zone below the north face of the mountain or about running a fleet of ambulances into the inferno. There would be no injured.
The only thing that could be done now was to try and stem the blazing forest, to stop it spreading outwards to wreak havoc and misery upon unsuspecting home owners. Soon they would have crop sprayers in the skies dumping hundreds of tons of water on the parts of the forests that remained intact. Others were out there, pumping and spraying great tracts of forest, trying to stop the searing heat from evaporating the water before the fires even arrived.
By mid-Sunday afternoon, the disaster was big national news. CNN had pictures, as did Fox News and most of the networks. By Sunday evening, all of the twenty-four-hour news channels were struggling with the story. They were without any fresh information, new facts, or revelatory opinions. Yes, Mount St. Helens had made a titanic eruption early on Sunday morning. Yes, there was a lot of fire and fury, ash, molten rock, and lava. And yes, anyone trapped in the immediate vicinity of the mountain was most certainly dead. And yes, there were God knows how many forest fires raging all around the northern territories beyond the volcano. Eyewitnesses from close up: zero, except for Don McKeag and his three friends.
Volcanoes traditionally do anything they damn well please, ruling out the possibilities of indignant editorials proclaiming in time-honored cliche,
