When Mt. St. Helens exploded in 1980 (Monday is the 40th anniversary) my wife and I were living about 250 miles downwind. By late afternoon the sky was completly blotted out, and the ash started falling. For the next week at least the roads were impassible, the state patrol was handing out tickets to anybody that wasn't driving an offical vehicle. In the middle of all this I get a phone call from an elder who tells me they had "called Bethel and had permission to cancel the meetings and field service."
Looking back on it, I wonder what would have happened if none of the local guys even thought of calling NY. Maybe we'd have tried to all get to the meetings and gotten busted in the process.