Mount St. Helens, 40 years later
Residents remember eruption
Last updated 5/19/2020 at 7:56am

Aram Langhans | Special to The Record
Locals wear masks on an ash-covered downtown Odessa street following the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980.
ODESSA - Eastern Washington residents are wearing medical masks these days due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But longtime resi- dents recall that this isn't the first time they've seen masks covering faces.
Some say they can recall the day the morn- ing that daylight turned to night – May 18, 1980. That was the day Mount St. Helens erupted.
"It was pitch black," resident Mike Cronrath recalled. "If you put your hand in front of your face, you wouldn't have been able to see it."
For days after that fateful Sunday morning, Odessa residents and other Eastern Washingtonians were in lockdown mo...
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