11:14 PM PST on Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Compiled by kgw.com Staff

MOUNT ST. HELENS, Wash. -- Tuesday's steam blast seemed so eerily familiar. But nearly 25 years ago now, it was a deadlier show that Mount St. Helens put on for the world.

AP file photo

Mount St. Helens sends a plume of ash, smoke and debris skyward Sunday, May 18, 1980 in its most violent eruption to date.

Rumbling to life after more than a century of inactivity, the volcano erupted May 18, 1980, with mind-boggling fury, blasting away its glorious Mount Fuji-like dome and north flank. The blast killed 57 people, flattened 230 square miles of forest land and flooded the valleys.

An apocalyptic plume of ash and pumice shot 15 miles into the heavens and turned that brilliant May morning into nighttime for hundreds of miles. The ash cloud girdled the globe, and youngsters started learning geology.

U.S. Forest Service Ranger Pamela McCray was 6 at the time, and her dad drove her from their home in Clatskanie, Ore., across the Columbia River to Kalama, Wash., to watch the eruption. More than 200 miles away, the ash from the plume darkened the sky over Spokane, and fellow Ranger Jason Harrison, then 7, had to wear a breathing mask on his way to school.

"I went to school for art, but when I got done, I decided I really wanted to just be out in the woods," McCray said.

It was the event of a lifetime - the sheer audacity of untamed nature, the tragic deaths, the worldwide ashfall, the demolition of countryside where many in the Northwest had camped and hiked.

It was almost too much to take in.

From helicopters in the air, National Guard crews looked for survivors, but saw only destruction: Once-mighty trees flattened like rows of Paul Bunyan toothpicks. A shiny red convertible stuck on a newly created island. Horses stranded. Cabins buried to the rafters. A lunar landscape not far from still-wooded slopes that had been shielded by a ridge.

Spirit Lake was covered with trees and mud, no longer recognizable. A crusty old local man named Harry Truman died in the blast -- he was a folk hero who refused to leave the mountain he loved.

Then-Washington state Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, a scientist by training, had toured the area both before and after the eruption. A rugged individualist, she loved the spunk and feistiness of Truman and others who didn't want to leave their cabins and businesses, but nonetheless did her best to get people out of the Red Zone she had designated.

In time, nature mostly recovered the slopes and foothills. Foresters replanted, the birds, animals and winds reseeded the meadows, the elk returned and the tourists, hikers and backpackers followed. New roads and bridges were built and, until last fall, it was possible to hike to the crater, which began resurrecting itself months after the blast with dome-building eruptions.

(The Associated Press contributed background to this report.)