Orders were given for all people to gather on the vessel or the wharf. By ten o'clock the last of the gray ash-covered ghosts was mustered in, 185 people on the vessel, 149 in the warehouse on the wharf. Blinded by ash, with throats so burned by the acrid fumes that even a hoarse whisper was agony, with nostrils bleeding from constant effort to keep them from being clogged with the fine dust, and with a stabbing pain in the lungs with every breath one drew, the people were at the extremity of their endurance. The situation looked desperate both for the residents and for the officers and crew of the Coast Guard cutter.
The officers of the Bear worked incessantly. In the dark they were here, there and everywhere, and Eric, filled with the spirit of the service, was on the jump. He was busy in the storehouse shortly before eleven o'clock in the morning when a man groped his way in, saying that he had just escaped an avalanche and that several men were marooned in a steamer lying off the cannery wharf half a mile below the dock. This was Eric's chance. So often had he made the trip from the ship to the storehouse that morning that even in the dark and through the flying spume of yellow horror he made his way direct to the first lieutenant, and saluted.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.
Going to Pieces Fast.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.
"We Saved 'em All."