When Mount St. Helens began spewing chaos and destruction across the Northwest last week, TIME correspondents and photographers rushed to the scene -- and could barely believe what they found. "It was beyond anything in my experience," said Correspondent Paul Witteman, who flew over the volcano for this week's cover story. "The whole terrain had been altered by the force of the explosion, and maps were next to useless." Cor respondent James Willwerth found the roads to one especially hard-hit town -- Ritzville, Wash. -- closed for 50 miles in every direction, so he hitched a ride in a Red Cross vehicle.

"The place was ankle deep in dust," said Willwerth. "It was surrealistic, a study in black and white, like a page out of an Aldous Huxley novel." Photographer Bill Thompson observed the effects of the volcanic cloud as it reached eastern Washington. Said he: "It was the bees that scared me, weighed down with ash. They staggered around like plaster casts of them selves, leaving wavering tracks on the dirty white blanket."

Photographer Roger Werth, who took the spectacular photographs on this week's cover, hastened to the Kelso, Wash., airport and was in the air 20 min. after the mountain blew its top, aiming his camera through a tiny window next to him as the pilot dipped and tilted for better shots. Said Werth: "At first we couldn't see a thing, but the air cleared for several minutes and then there was the mountain and the huge plume heading up into the sky." Photographer John Barr was riding a National Guard helicopter during an air search, when the craft suddenly banked. "I was right in the doorway," said Barr, "and a sudden gust blew my glasses off. Some day maybe they will be found down there on the rim of Mount St. Helens."

For Reporter-Researcher Brigid O'Hara-Forster in New York City, the Mount St. Helens saga was her third cover story in five weeks, and one of dozens in a long career of tracking wars and politics--but it was her first cover story to have no villains, only victims. "It put our merely human failings and frailties in perspective," she said. "It is literally inhuman.

There's nobody to blame." Photographer Werth, who has lived in the Mount St. Helens area for more than ten years, said he began to feel the enormity of the disaster days later: "I've skied there, hiked there, worked there as a fire watch. Just last Saturday I was visiting old Harry Truman. Spirit Lake was absolutely calm, and Harry was running his lawn sprinklers. Now it's all gone."

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