I was a Deputy Sheriff in Whitman County (Pullman). I got called in early because the mountain blew. We had to close off the roads going out of Colfax. I was stationed at the intersection of SR195 and SR.127. It was 3:00 in the afternoon, totally dark, and ash coming down like crazy. We tried wearing gas masks, but the filters plugged up too fast. We didn't know if that ash was going to kill us eventually - like asbestos. We ended up wearing those surgical masks, which didn't do much. It was tough convincing people to stay at the shelter in town. Most were good, some complete arses.

Later that night I had to make a blood run from Colfax to meet an Idaho State Trooper in Colton, a pretty long trip, but the ash was not as bad down South. I headed out and had to keep stopping to dump out my air filter, plus I couldn't see anything. Ended up making it almost to Pullman and the car crapped out all together. We had to do a shuttle between Idaho State Police, Pullman PD, and us.

I slept in the jail for about 4 days because travel was damn near impossible. We kept things closed for about 3 days. People were not too nice after being held up for a couple of days in a shelter, but we would have had some very serious problems with people stranded or worse, crashing into each other.

I won't forget it, that's for sure. I will never forget standing in that intersection completely covered in ash, thinking this is what the end of the world looks like; and worried that it was the end of our little piece of the world. We lost the engines in almost all of our patrol cars, worked 18 plus hours for a number of days. Thank God nothing serious in the way of crime happened.