OLYMPIA Wash. (KPTV) - Sunday marked 45 years since the eruption of Mount Saint Helens.
It was a powerful force of nature, equal to 24 megatons of TNT, that destroyed everything within a six-mile radius.
Washingtonian Austin Jenkins, just six-years-old then, can still vividly recall that moment in time that re-shaped the Pacific Northwest, and its thinking about volcanoes forever.
57 people lost their lives on May 18, 1980. Jenkins and his classmates at the Puget Sound Primary School were nearly among them, less than 20 miles from the base of the mountain on an end-of-the-year camping trip.
"First, I heard three booms and my teacher said, 'Look up,' and I looked up and there was a big cloud that looked like a tornado," he said.
"Suddenly, day turned to night, and this cataclysmic event happened: a volcano erupted, and that doesn't happen every day. And suddenly we and our chaperones and teachers had to make a dash for our lives."
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It would take 12 hours and aid from Good Samaritans to help them reach safety back in Seattle, where their harrowing journey was chronicled by the local press.
"The ash is so heavy that the windshield wipers are on, laboring against the ash; some of the cars broke down because of it, we were essentially driving blind on our own," he remembers.
It's an experience that links Jenkins and his classmates to this day.
"For each and every one of them, this was viewed as one of the momentous experiences of their entire life, that's how I feel, how we all feel, one for the history books," Jenkins said.
Watching the new and scientific coverage from that event stayed with the now Olympia resident. He's been a writer and TV journalist in the region for 30+ years.
"It's a job where you have to go to the scene, you have to capture what's happening in real time, and when something big like that happens you go, and it's what I grew up wanting to do so in the end the volcano didn't scare me away," Jenkins said.
"I think an anniversary like this is just a good example to be humble about nature, to be prepared when you're out in nature, to remember the lives lost, the scientists that research volcanoes, and lastly I'm just glad to have a story to tell and to be alive to tell it," he said.