On the morning of May 18, 1980, David Johnston radioed in from his observation post six miles north of Mount St. Helens. “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” Those were his last words.
He was thirty years old. A volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. And he’d been stationed at Coldwater II—a ridge that seemed safely distant from the rumbling mountain—measuring gas emissions and ground deformation for weeks. The mountain had been belching steam and ash since March 27, swelling like an angry boil on Washington’s landscape.
When Scientists Become the Data Points They’re Trying to Collect
Here’s the thing about volcanic monitoring in 1980: it was basically educated guessing with some seismographs thrown in. Johnston knew St. Helens was dangerous. He’d argued for larger evacuation zones, pushed back against pressure to let logging crews return to work. “This damn mountain is going to blow,” he told colleagues, though nobody quite understood the geometry of what was coming.
Turns out, the north face of St. Helens had been bulging outward at nearly five feet per day—an enormous landslide waiting to happen, holding back a pressurized magma system like a cork in a champagne bottle. When a magnitude 5.1 earthquake finally triggered the collapse, the lateral blast traveled at speeds up to 670 miles per hour.
Johnston didn’t stand a chance.
The Peculiar Mathematics of Being in Exactly the Wrong Place
Six miles sounds like a safe distance, doesn’t it? That’s roughly 95 football fields. The problem was that everyone—Johnston included—was thinking in terms of vertical eruptions, the kind that shoot ash skyward. Krakatoa in 1883. Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Those were the mental models. But St. Helens went sideways, releasing energy equivalent to 27,000 atomic bombs in a horizontal direction that obliterated 230 square miles of forest.
The blast zone extended 19 miles to the north. Johnston’s observation post was vaporized, along with everything else in the path. His body was never found, though searchers recovered his trailer—or what was left of it—buried under debris.
Wait—maybe we need to back up and understand who Johnston actually was, because he wasn’t some reckless thrillseeker with a death wish.
The Kid Who Collected Rocks and Never Really Stopped
Johnston grew up in Oak Lawn, Illinois, fascinated by geology. Studied at the University of Illinois, then earned his PhD from the University of Washington in 1978—just two years before St. Helens erupted. His dissertation focused on volcanic gas emissions, particularly the relationship between sulfur dioxide levels and eruptive behavior. He’d worked on Mount Augustine in Alaska after its 1976 eruption, camping in brutal conditions to collect data. Colleagues described him as meticulous, cautious even. The opposite of cavalier.
He understood risk better than most. That’s what makes his death so brutally ironic—he was one of the people trying to quantify the danger, to turn volcanic violence into predictable numbers. Science killed him, in a sense, or rather the gaps in scientific understanding did.
What Happens When a Mountain Decides to Redecorate the Landscape
The eruption reducted the mountain’s elevation from 9,677 feet to 8,363 feet. It killed 57 people total, including Johnston, photographer Reid Blackburn, and innkeeper Harry R. Truman, who’d famously refused to evacuate. The blast knocked down an estimated 4 billion board feet of timber. Lahars—volcanic mudflows—traveled as far as the Columbia River, 50 miles away.
Johnston’s death fundamentally changed how volcanologists approach fieldwork. The USGS established the David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, in 1981. Modern monitoring systems now include satellite radar that can detect ground deformation from space, gas sensors that work remotely, and protocols that keep scientists farther from active vents.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Learning Through Loss
There’s something deeply unsettling about the fact that Johnston’s death taught us how to not die in similar situations. Every safety protocol written in his name is essentially a detailed account of where the previous understanding failed. The lateral blast—the mechanism that killed him—is now a standard consideration in volcanic hazard assessments. But in May 1980, it was still theoretical, something that happened at Mount Pelée in Martinique in 1902 but surely wouldn’t happen here, not like this.
Volcanic science is, by necessity, a discipline built on catastrophe. You can model eruptions, run simulations, study historical accounts. But ultimately, someone has to be there when the mountain wakes up, close enough to measure the gases and tremors but not so close that—well. Johnston was exactly where he needed to be to do his job. The mountain just didn’t follow the expected script.
The ridge where he died is now called Johnston Ridge, and there’s an observatory there, perched at the same distance that killed him but designed to withstand future eruptions. Visitors can stand where he stood and look directly into the horseshoe-shaped crater, a geological wound that’s still visible decades later. It’s a monument and a warning, carved into the landscape at a scale that dwarfs any human memorial.
