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David A. Johnston
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David A. Johnston (December 18, 1949 – May 18, 1980) was a volcanologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Johnston was manning an observation post about 10 km (6 miles) from the volcano Mount St. Helens on the morning of May 18, 1980. He was the first to report the eruption, transmitting the famous message "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" before being swept away by the lateral blast created by the collapse of the mountain's north face. His body was never recovered.
The direction of the blast came in fact as no surprise to Johnston, who was the only geologist with the USGS to correctly predict the nature of the eruption. The official USGS prediction was that the volcano would experience a conventional vertical column eruption, while Johnston (who had been doing extensive research on the volcano and the geologic forces at play within and around it) had proposed that the blast would be lateral and originate from the bulge which he had observed developing on the side of the mountain.
Johnston was born in Illinois, and studied geology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He completed his Ph.D. in 1978 at the University of Washington, Seattle, a study of the Mount Augustine volcano in Alaska before starting working with the USGS.
In 1997, the area known as Coldwater Ridge was renamed after him. On the ridge is located the Johnston Ridge Observatory, a visitor center and observation post, part of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.
- Obituary on the USGS web site
- A life in science sometimes becomes a death, too, an article in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
- David A. Johnston at Find-A-Grave