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One of the hardest-hit towns outside the immediate vicinity of the volcano was Ritzville, Wash, (pop. 2,000). A current of warm, dust-laden air from the west collided with cold air from the east and dumped 5 in. of ash on the town. Reported TIME Correspondent James Willwerth: "If Spokane looked like an ashtray, Ritzville looked as though it had been hit by an avalanche. The town was caked in dust and mud. Streets had 2-ft. drifts. On South Adams Street, Mrs. Erma Miller's once meticulously landscaped ranch-style house looked as if it were in a desert. The lawn had disappeared almost completely. Branches were broken from two formerly flowering hawthornes. There was a 4-ft. drift on the patio. Said Mrs. Miller, leaning on her snow shovel: 'You ought to see the inside. You can't keep the dust out.' "Within hours of the storm, 2,500 stranded motorists sought refuge in Ritzville. Schools and churches were turned into shelters; 81 people slept on the floor of Perkins Restaurant, and many families took in strangers for a night or two. On Tuesday morning Adams County Sheriff Ron Snowden let 75 motorists try to drive out, after a compressor at the firehouse was used to blow the cars' air cleaners free of dust. Only 20 made it. Twenty-five returned to Ritzville. The rest were stranded on the highway and had to seek refuge at a rest stop. During the worst of the storm, cars could run only about half an hour in the Ritzville area before stalling.
"Adams County Auditor Kim Yerxa estimated that cleaning up Ritzville and the rest of the county will cost $2 million; the annual budget is only twice that sum. To clear Ritzville's streets, Sheriff Snowden directed a fire truck to spray the ash so that a road grader could push it into 3-ft.-high dikes. They, in turn, were shoveled up by road crews. But Snowden predicted that it will be a year before the town is free of ash."
For months ahead, residents of Ritzville and a large slice of the Northwest will have to live with the ash, a visible reminder of the titanic forces of nature that shape the earth. To volcano experts Mount St. Helens may be a baby and its eruption second-rate. But to the people in its path it was a catastrophe. ∎