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MOSES LAKE It didn’t take long after the eruption on Mt. St. Heles on May 18, 1980, for life to begin to re-emerge on the sides of the mountain, according to biologist and author Eric Wagner.
Wagner, speaking in the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium on Saturday about the recovery of the area around Mt. St. Helens in the four decades of the volcano’s last major eruption, told the story of plant biologist Jerry Franklin, aquatic biologist Jim Sidell and geologist Fred Swanson and the helicopter trip they took to Ryan Lake, about eight miles northeast of Mt. St. Helens, in June 1980, about two weeks after the eruption.
MOSES LAKE It’s been 43 years since Mt. St. Helens erupted, spewing ash across vast swaths of the Pacific Northwest, covering towns, roads and fields of crops, and permanently changing the lives of many for days and weeks to follow.
“It was just everywhere. People put pans out. They were shoveling it,” said Stephanie Massart, the regent of the Karneetsa Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Moses Lake. “People were using wheelbarrows to put it out on the street and dump trucks would come pick it up.”