The event called “The Big Blow” or “The Great Olympic Blowdown” felled eight times as many trees as the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.