25th Anniversary of Mt. St. Helens Eruption
25 years ago today a 5.1 magnitude earthquake caused a massive slide of material off the north side of Mt. St. Helens releasing a tumult of pyroclastic flows and ash that devastated 150 square miles of beautiful Washington wilderness.
I live a little over forty miles from Mt. St. Helens now, but when it blew it's top I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska. I missed out on the ash that covered everything out here. I also missed out on the beautiful red sunsets that the midwest enjoyed.
May 18th sticks in my mind as well because May 18, 1995 was also the infamous “Day 10,000” for Pick-based databases. At the time I worked for ADP Dealer Services, which used Pick databases for its turnkey systems for car dealerships. I was part of a cross-functional team that found and corrected any Day 10000 problems in our products (it turns out there weren't many). This was a dry run at Y2K problems later on.
I've been up to visit Mt. St. Helens since I moved here, including the eerie Ape Caves lava tube on the south side of the mountain and the tourist traps on the north side. It's worth taking a look if you're visiting the Portland area.
Josh Poulson
Posted Wednesday, May 18 2005 09:25 AM
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