The story of Mad Dog and the volcano starts on March 20, 1980. At 3:47 p.m. on that day, Mount St. Helens rumbled to life with an earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale. It was mostly unnoticed. Earthquakes often occur in Washington State, most are light enough not to be felt.
Within a week Mount St. Helens was very much in the local Seattle area news, but by early April the mountain seemed to quiet down again. Then, on May 18, 1980, the sky turned black.
That spring I was working regularly as a brakeman on Burlington Northern’s South Pool Turn (Seattle-Portland). The crew desk called me for pool freight No. 147, working as the rear brakeman through the wee hours on the morning of May 18. I was riding the cupola of the caboose as we started up Napavine Hill on what was looking like the start of a beautiful sunrise. At that point there was a magnificent view of Mount St. Helens, I looked over at the conductor and said, “Well, if it’s today we’ll never see it like that again.” I made this comment at just past 6 a.m. Neither I nor anyone else had any idea of the tragedy and destruction about to happen.
I was at the motel in Portland at 8:32 a.m. when the eruption occurred. As I was having breakfast, a loud boom rattled the windows of the restaurant. I gave it little thought at the time. I returned to my room and went straight to bed. Waking up around 1 p.m., I turned on the TV. As I waited for my eyes to focus, I saw the picture of what looked like a large fire in Downtown Portland. Then the camera zoomed out and reality hit me. Mount St. Helens had been the source of that window-rattling blast. A massive landslide of its north face, fortunately, the side facing away from Portland, unleashed a devastating lateral explosion of pulverized rock, lava, and high-pressure steam traveling at speeds as high as 670 mph.
I joined a few other railroaders on the motel’s roof and watched the ash cloud drift east. It would eventually reach 11 states. We had to wait a couple of days in Portland until the railroad was able to reopen the main line for traffic over the Tuttle River Bridge, just North of Castle Rock.
Seven days later, I was again called to work Train 147 with the same crew. The mountain had another big eruption while we were getting rest in Portland. When I mentioned the coincidence to my mom, Kathryn, she suggested I find a new crew!
I do not recall the trip south, but when we were called to work a return trip to Seattle. The railroad found more track issues and sent us back to the motel.
A day later we did make it out of town. We were told that Central Traffic Control was out between Vancouver Junction and Vader because the ash from the mountain was now drifting northwest, mixing with light precipitation, and raining mud that created an insulating effect on the track signal system. Every train had to stop and hand-line every control point. I was working at the rear end again. We were following a Union Pacific train with another Union Pacific train behind us. The first UP train lined the switches and left them off power, we followed, and the UP train behind us had their caboose crew put the switches back on power.
The most memorable part of the trip was the Union Pacific train pulling up behind us, the UP engineer getting out front with a bottle of water and trying his best to clear the engineer’s window. The only color in this whole scene was the UP’s headlight and the spot where the wiper blade was trying to cut through the mud to get to the window. The normally bright yellow locomotive was gray, the landscape was gray, the houses were gray, and the fields were gray. The cows, also gray, were looking at us, like, “What?”
I wish I had my camera that day. It was something you had to see to believe.
I remember that day…working for BN as a train order operator. Showed up to work in Kalama Washington at 8am Sunday, May 18, 1980 – I felt the eruption and immediately notified Seattle King St station dispature – the power of that mushroom cloud rising into the sky was amazing! We stopped all trains in both directions. You had to see and feel it to fully understand the magnitude and power of the eruption.
I can remember seeing the mushroom form the front yard at home in Puyallup for weeks after the 18th. During a three furlough from the BN, I was attending school in Pensacola Florida as a USNR Photographer, while in a gift shop with some of my classmate’s, the was a commotion in another part of the shop, I walked over to see what was up, they were going goofy over gifts made from the Ash from Mt. St. Helen. I walked away with a look of disgust, when asked about it later, I said I’d seen enough of it already…. had to wash the truck every three days because of it.