Originally published Aug. 23, 1992
You can get used to just about anything in Alaska. Even volcanoes. So when word spread across Anchorage Tuesday afternoon that Mount Spurr had erupted, we were interested but far from frantic.
After all, it’s not like we haven’t had volcanic eruptions around here before.
In that graceful, geologic necklace known as the Aleutian arc, there are 80 volcanoes with names, including 44 active volcanoes (about four-fifths of all the active volcanoes in the United States). Hardly a year goes by anymore that one of them doesn’t blow its stack.
Stand atop any hillside in Anchorage on a clear day and you can easily see two active volcanoes on the western horizon MountRedoubt and Mount Spurr. Drive south toward Homer and you can spy a third Mount Augustine. All three have erupted in the past six years.
Some Anchorage residents have even grown a little jaded. Perhaps understandably. When Augustine blew in ’86, most of the ash fell on the Kenai Peninsula and points south. When Redoubt went in ‘89 and ‘90, the winds carried most of the debris north. It’s been nearly 40 years (not since Spurr last erupted in ’53) that Anchorage has suffered a significant dose of volcanic ash.
We’ve had our inconveniences, of course. Flights were canceled and Anchorage airports were closed by both Augustine and Redoubt. Citizens were asked to conserve power. Motorists were told to change their air filters as often as possible.
There was even a bona fide scare. In 1990 a Dutch airliner with 231 passengers aboard flew into Redoubt’s ash cloud over Talkeetna and lost all power when its jet engines shut down. For the next 12 minutes as the cabin lights went out, and the passengers’ whispers turned to cries of concern the huge jetliner lost half its altitude, plummeting two miles toward Earth. Then the engines kicked back on.
So most of us in Anchorage were respectful but cool when Spurr became Alaska’s latest volcano to explode. We’d heard that Spurr’s ash plume had rocketed 10 miles high. We heard it was headed our way. It sounded interesting.
At the Daily News, certain reporters and photographers were assigned facets of the story to cover. Certain editors prepared to stand by. The rest of us went home. A few of us got dressed for a softball game. The Daily News was scheduled to play Channel 11 at 8:40 p.m. in the last game of the season.
Humility before the power of nature sometimes comes in stages. And sometimes it comes too late.
At the Daily News, I’d just changed my clothes for our softball game. By 7:45 I was about to head downstairs when I decided to step across the hall to the west windows to see if any ash was headed our direction.
What I saw left me a little bit stunned.
The gathering sky had turned coal black on the western horizon where the sun was supposed to be like some dark, biblical revelation billowing our way. It was absolutely breathtaking.
It wasn’t clear whether the ash would pass directly over us, and it wasn’t clear how soon it might arrive. But it was impressive all the same.
Ten minutes later I was at the Cartee fields in northeast Anchorage waiting for the game before ours to end. Some of our players wondered aloud whether we’d play. The darkness had moved closer.
I asked the plate umpire whether he intended to call the game if the ash started to fall (knowing that our league officials are notorious for not canceling softball games for anything short of a monsoon).
The umpire wasn’t sure.
It was time for me to make out our lineup. I’d left my pencil in the car, and no one had a spare, so I took off at a trot toward the parking lot. On the way back, the very first particles of Spurr’s volcanic dust began to fall on our softball field. They caught in my eyes as I ran.
When I stopped I couldn’t feel the ash anymore so I started to fill out the scorecard. A few names into the lineup and the ash particles began to bounce off the scorebook like hailstones.
“The ump’s going to call the game,” someone said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“He hasn’t called it yet,” I said. “Don’t go!”
(We’d lost a game by forfeit once before simply because we’d been one player short at game time. This time it was different. Hardly anyone from the other team was there. We stood to win by forfeit if we could hang on against the volcano just a few minutes longer. We could gain undisputed possession of second place.)
But the ash was falling harder now. Things were getting confused.
“The ump’s going to call the game!” someone repeated.
“But he hasn’t yet!”
My wife and children wanted to go. Some of the players wanted to go.
Almost that very instant, the game in progress was called to a halt by the plate umpire, and everyone was running for their cars. Ash was falling hard now.
I stood still for a moment, alone in the ash storm, feeling a little foolish for having worried about the outcome of a softball game in the face of a showering, volcanic eruption.
Then the feeling passed.
Rookie first-baseman Kim Severson, a newcomer to Alaska, was pumped. “Geez!” she said, “I’ve never had a game called on account of volcano before . . . ”
Neither had I, to tell the truth, but I didn’t say so (we Alaskans have our image to maintain). I just nodded sympathetically.
Then I joined my family in the dash for the parking lot.
It was difficult to keep the ash out of your eyes. Ash is a misnomer, I thought. It’s really tiny grains of glass. And it hurt just like it does when you get sand blown in your eye. One of my daughters began to cry . . .
Once we got inside our car, though, we were all OK. We felt protected. Now it became a question of protecting the car . . .
We decided not to drive home to South Anchorage. That way was utterly black. Instead, we turned our car toward the last sliver of open skyline north of downtown, where my brother-in-law lives.
The volcanic dirt billowed all around as we drove.
Even with bright headlights on, it was hard to see the road or whether anyone was walking along its edge. We slowed to a crawl.
The powdery ash grew so thick on the street it splashed up from the wheels like rainwater.
The morning after the eruption of Mount Spurr, the town was digging itself out and all the romance was gone.
Gone to dust. A monumental blanket of dust bigger than all Anchorage.
Rubbing a little silica into the wound of it all was the fact that our summer rains had finally stopped the day before, and the sun was actually shining.
Not that you could see it. Dry weather and a few passing cars combined to whip the ash as high as a 10-story building, blotting out the sun.
Traffic was light. Many residents took care not to drive their cars. Many stayed home from work. Most of those on the road wandered through a lunar landscape searching in vain for an auto parts store that might still have air filters for sale.
“I sold 500 air filters before I even opened the shop today,” a clerk at a downtown auto supply store told me. “We don’t have much left.”
Paint shops that sold protective mouth-and-nose masks were doing just as well. Businesses bought them by the dozens for their employees. Most homeowners made do with handkerchief bandannas.
And one by one, the people of Anchorage crawled out of their homes and shops to sweep away volcano dust and get back to their lives.