curiosity satisfied!

[aithne]

Well, in a creepy sort of way, at least.

(Note here that I was 6 in 1980 and don't remember Mt. St. Helens erupting.)

At the Mt. St. Helens Johnston Visitor Center (the location of the VolcanoCam) they have a really nice movie about the eruption. One of the eeriest bits of the movie is the words, evidently screamed into a radio, "Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!"

What they didn't tell us in the movie that those were the last words of geologist David Johnston, who was sitting on the ridge that would later be named after him, monitoring the volcano from approximately where the audience for the movie sits, a few seconds before the gas cloud vented from the volcano incinerated him.

I've been wondering for a few months who that was, and now I know.

Comments

[inanna.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, being that young you would have missed knowing who that was. He'd been monitoring the mountain from what was thought to be a save distance when it popped in a large than expected explosion.

---

A few nights ago I was listing to the pre-recorded CBC hour on KUOW. Right in the middle of a story, the alert system tones break in. Now, I've never heard those without some sort of announcer lead-up warning, which certainly had not happened this time.

I was running through possibilities, start with St. Helens cutting loose in a really big way, when some official voice came on with the "this is a test..." message.

I don't know if KOUW accidentlly recorded a test earlier that day over the CBC show, or if a late night test was run and whoever was minding the store at KUOW was out, but I'm sure a few people were briefly excited.

[tikva.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, and bester wants to be that guy. That's what makes me a bit nervous.

I mean, he doesn't wanna die, but he is a volcanologist. I keep reminding him that a) those things are a bit warm, and b) they don't like him nearly as much as he likes them.