Word: ashes
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...eruption blew down 150 sq. mi. of timber worth about $200 million, caused an estimated $222 million in damage to wheat, alfalfa and other crops as far east as Missoula, Mont., and buried 5,900 miles of roads under ash. Clearing them could cost another $200 million. The blast created a 20-mile log jam along the Columbia River that blocked shipping between Longview, Wash., and Astoria, Ore. Volcanic mud carried by the river choked the harbor of Portland. Officials estimated that the ports would lose $5 million a day until dredges could clear a new channel through the silt...
...winds carried the eruption's debris northeast from the shattered mountain, thick layers of ash, looking like dirty snow, fell on eastern Washington. Yakima, a town of 50,000 located 85 miles east of the volcano, experienced midnight at noon. The mining and ranching communities of the Idaho panhandle and western Montana turned into ghostly towns in which nobody could move about the dust-choked streets without surgical masks or some substitute: handkerchiefs, bandanas, even coffee filters strapped over nose and mouth with rubber bands. Schools, factories and most stores and offices closed. Highways were closed and airports were...
...Huey chopper, piloted by National Guard Captain Harold Ward, went up the south fork of the Toutle, which had turned into a caramel ribbon, toward the peak, still shrouded in clouds of steam and ash. The mocha-colored terrain appeared otherworldly, a madly undulating landscape. The trees looked as if they had been strewn across the foothills by a careless child. As we passed over Baker Camp, a logging base, we spotted a pickup truck, a dead child lying face upward in the back. Ward swung the Huey over a huge mudhole that had once been Spirit Lake, a body...
Within four days the worst was over -maybe. The dust had settled in the heavy-fallout area, roughly from the ruptured peak to as far east as Montana. Fine ash particles, mostly glasslike silica, had spread in a gigantic, banana-shaped arc in the stratosphere across the nation and will slowly dissipate into invisible clouds after blowing round the world several times. Outside the Northwestern U.S., people will probably notice nothing more than some spectacularly colorful dawns and sunsets over the next several months...
...there was a possibility of another natural disaster. A 200-ft. wall of mud and ash from the volcano prevented the waters of Spirit Lake from flowing into the Toutle River. Local officials feared at first that the dam might suddenly give way, sending backed-up water and mud flooding through the riverbank towns of Longview, Kelso and Castle Rock, menacing the lives of 50,000 people. By the weekend, however, water was slowly seeping through the mud-and-ash plug, and pressure on the dam had eased...