May 18, 1980, a familiar voice brought viewers one of the biggest stories of the century.
"I was really one of the first reporters up in the air getting close to the mountain and seeing this just incredible eruption,” said Essex Porter.
KIRO 7's own Porter hopped in a helicopter and flew over Mount St. Helens as volcanic ash and steam spewed from the mountain.
"I just felt this expansive sense of amazement and just wondering how I could be sure to bring that home to the audience,” he said.
In 1980, Porter worked at KATU in Portland.
He covered the evacuations leading up to the eruption.
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A video shows him reporting May 17, 1980, which is the day before Mount St. Helens blew.
"I'll always remember someone who said, ‘Our mountain would never hurt us,’ and the mountain exploded the next day,” said Porter.
People heard the blast hundreds of miles away.
It vaporized the side of the mountain in seconds, triggered the largest landslide in recorded history, flattened trees, destroyed homes and killed 57 people.
The wind blew 520 million tons of ash across the country that darkened the skies.
"The kind of explosion we saw, never in a million year would I of imagined that,” said Porter.
Fast forward to 2020. The Mount St. Helens visitor center is closed because of COVID-19, but families stopped by to mark the anniversary anyway.
"It blows my mind to see how powerful that volcano was, the actual explosion and how much it's changed the layout of the area,” said visitor Micah Diffendal.
Four decades later, Porter continues to tell the biggest stories of the century.
"The shutdown is making all of us anxious in the same way that Mount St. Helens made all of us anxious,” he said.
However, Porter feels no story rivals what he reported on 40 years ago.
"Nothing compared to covering the Mount St. Helens eruption,” he said.