{"id":3674,"date":"2025-10-22T01:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3674"},"modified":"2025-10-22T01:30:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:30:31","slug":"ftv-volcano-cowboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3674","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Volcano Cowboys"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Do you need to be a little bit crazy to be a volcanologist?\u00a0 I used to show a video to my Geography \/ Earth Science classes that featured a French couple named Katia and Maurice Krafft.\u00a0 As he talked about what it is like to work on an active volcano, Maurice described the chaotic environment as being, \u201cA little bit crazy.\u201d\u00a0 Tongue firmly implanted in his cheek, he went on: \u00a0 \u201cI have seen so much that if I were to die today studying a volcano, that would be okay as I have seen enough.\u00a0 I would like to build a canoe out of titanium or something and ride down a lava flow taking temperatures and gas measurements.\u201d\u00a0 This would not only be \u2018a little bit crazy\u2019, it would be certain death.\u00a0 I do not think the Kraffts had any sort of death wish, but perhaps they became a little too familiar with their prey and too complacent in the dangers posed by their chosen profession.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On June 3, 1991, Katia, Maurice, fellow volcanologist Harry Glicken and forty other people were killed by a pyroclastic flow eruption.\u00a0 A pyroclastic flow is a cloud of superheated gas and ash that roars down the flanks of a volcano at tremendous speed.\u00a0 Japan\u2019s Mount Unzen, where they perished, has a long history of this type of eruption.\u00a0 One can only speculate how, with their great knowledge of volcanic eruptions, they put themselves in harm\u2019s way.\u00a0 When their bodies were recovered two days later, they were burned beyond recognition and had to be identified using personal items including Maurice\u2019s watch and their camera equipment.\u00a0 Any film they had taken of the approaching flow was destroyed by the intense heat but in the end, the position of their bodies near their rental car indicates they had made no attempt to flee.\u00a0 Glicken apparently had and his body was found some distance away from their vehicle.\u00a0 Certainly they knew that what they saw coming down the mountain signaled their doom.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0May 18, 2025 marked the 45th anniversary of the eruption of Washington state\u2019s Mount St. Helens.\u00a0 Marking this event compelled me to dig out a book my wife had given me for my birthday back in 2000.\u00a0 The book\u2019s title, <\/span>Volcano Cowboys: The Rocky Evolution of a Dangerous Science<\/span><\/i> (by Dick Thompson, St. Martin\u2019s Press 2000) was coined from comments made by a graduate of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory\u2019s training program.\u00a0 The un-named former student said, \u201cFeeling earthquakes in the middle of the night, driving into the observatory, driving out to the Chain of Craters to try to be where the eruption might occur, when lava first broke the surface. . .\u00a0 it was all a very exciting set of experiences.\u00a0 September seventy-seven, that was my first eruption.\u00a0 It went on for three weeks.\u00a0 Big nighttime fountains.\u00a0 I remember flying over the top of them with Jack Lockwood in his light plane and having [the plane] get shot up in the air by the thermals, and that sort of thing.\u00a0 We were young guys in love with volcanoes and we wanted to see as much red rock [lava] as we could.\u00a0 We called ourselves \u2018volcano cowboys\u2019 and we were anxious to go to any volcano that would have us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There was only one problem with having the United States Geological Survey\u2019s premier (and only) on-site observatory \/ training facility on a Hawaiian volcano.\u00a0 The Hawaiian Islands are massive shield volcanoes built up from the ocean floor by thousands of lava over the eons.\u00a0 The fiery rivers of lava snaking their way across the big island of Hawaii to the sea are impressive but not as dangerous as explosive type composite volcanoes like Mount St. Helens.\u00a0 Composites are made of alternating layers of volcanic ash and lava flows with much more explosive potential than the Hawaiian type.\u00a0 The folks trained at the HVO who were dispatched to Mount St. Helens in April of 1980 were not at all familiar with the eruptive patterns of a beast like this.\u00a0 This put them at odds with geologists from what was known as the USGS\u2019s \u2018Denver group\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dave Johnston had spent a few good years at HVO but he had pursued a different path in his volcano studies.\u00a0 As an undergraduate student, he spent two summers as a field assistant for Pete Lipman studying ancient (and inactive) volcanoes in southern Colorado.\u00a0 In 1975, an old friend studying geology in Alaska called and asked him if he would be interested in a summer field assistant position, \u201con a real volcano, not one of those dead ones.\u201d\u00a0 The experience Dave and Doug (Lalla) had on the St. Augustine volcano prompted Johnston to change the focus of his PhD thesis from ancient volcanoes to active ones.\u00a0 This gave him direct experience with a Mount St. Helens type of composite volcano that other HVO vets did not have.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The following January, Dave and Doug went back to St. Augustine island because the volcano was exploding periodically and the monitoring equipment they had installed needed to be repaired.\u00a0 The team dispatched (including Dave and Doug) traveled there by helicopter and\u00a0 landed just before a whiteout blizzard began.\u00a0 The pilot tried to get airborne and high enough to radio for help but a burst of wind dashed the helicopter to the ground.\u00a0 The pilot only suffered mild injuries but they were all now stranded on the shore of an active volcanic island.\u00a0 Forced to take shelter in a dilapidated corrugated-metal shed that was still standing from the summer before, they could not help to notice it was full of holes caused by recent lava bombs.\u00a0 The front wall had been caved in by a pyroclastic flow much like the one that had killed the Kraffts.\u00a0 It was not a safe place for them to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It took three days before they could be rescued and all the while, \u201cSt. Augustine shook and puffed.\u201d\u00a0 Twelve hours after they were removed from the island, the volcano exploded.\u00a0 According to Thompson, \u201cWhen Lalla returned to the island, he found the shack still standing, but the mattresses had been incinerated, and the batteries and plastics had been melted.\u00a0 To do that much damage, temperatures inside the shack had to have reached eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit.\u00a0 Nobody would have survived.\u201d\u00a0 When Johnston joined the volcanologists monitoring St. Helens in April of 1980, his experience studying a volcano with this type of explosive potential made him a sort of volcano guru.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Friction between the scientists grew the more exhausted they became.\u00a0 At some point, a heated argument over how much risk anyone should take to gather data soured the atmosphere even further.\u00a0 Johnston was the youngest member of the Survey team at St. Helens and didn\u2019t really fit in with either the Dever or HVO camps.\u00a0 He used his sense of humor to dispel some of the tension between the HVO and Denver groups by announcing he had found an eyewitness to one of the mountain\u2019s biggest eruptions.\u00a0 He opened his hand and released a spark spitting toy dinosaur on the conference table – his message was simple:\u00a0 Lighten up!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were a lot of different parties anxiously awaiting a definitive word from the Survey team monitoring the activity on St. Helens.\u00a0 There were frequent earthquakes taking place as well as eruptions of steam and ash, known as phreatic eruptions.\u00a0 The Survey team members were at odds as to exactly what was driving the activity.\u00a0 Was it magma rising toward the surface or was there a deeper magma source supplying the heat energy driving the eruptions?\u00a0 While they tossed various theories and opinions around, landowners, logging companies, the U.S. Forest Service, and Washington\u2019s Governor, Dixie Lee Ray, all wanted answers.\u00a0 When Forest Service roads were blocked off, even the gawkers who wanted to get close to the action were irritated.\u00a0 Geologists weren\u2019t used to being asked to predict if and when a major eruption would occur so questions went unanswered and nobody was happy with the lack of information.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For their part, the Survey team was busy trying to find the right equipment to help them understand what mechanisms were at play.\u00a0 Between the phreatic eruptions, helicopters would swoop into the crater so one of the Survey geologists could gather gas and ash samples.\u00a0 Analysing these samples could give them a peek at what was happening deep underground.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tilt meters were placed at various locations on the mountain\u2019s flanks – rising magma bodies often cause the volcano’s shape to distort.\u00a0 As different monitoring devices were deployed, the Survey teams ran into another obstacle:\u00a0 communicating the results with each other and the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Mount St. Helen\u2019s first began to stir, the survey turned to two of their most experienced members to create a hazard map to describe the chain reaction of various types of destruction an eruption could unleash.\u00a0 Donal Mullineaux and Rocky Crandell did just that but with all the uncertainty of the unfolding events, the maps they produced were questioned:\u00a0 \u201cWhat did it mean to have tephra (the stuff that falls out of the air from an eruption) so well mapped?\u00a0 Did a zone of hazard as mapped mean that anyone outside of these boundaries was likely to be perfectly safe?\u201d As Thompson pointed out, \u201cNo one knew what preceded any of those eruptions.\u00a0 The scientists had no catalog to match the weeks of steam eruptions and quakes.\u00a0 St. Helens was a perplexing volcano.\u00a0 The longer the emergency dragged on, the more pressure was exerted by local officials and timber industry executives who all wanted closer access to the mountain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In early April, Crandell reached out to an expert on landslides from Pennsylvania State University who he hoped would give them some insights into potential slope failure on the mountain.\u00a0 Barry Voight, actor Jon Voight\u2019s brother, made the trip out west and set up camp on a hilltop where he could get a clear view of the mountain\u2019s north face.\u00a0 Between photographing and sketching fractures in St. Helens snow and ice features, he dug into the stack of papers he had brought with him about landslides at volcanoes.\u00a0 Before he departed back east, he stirred up the Survey team by suggesting they hire local surveyors to gather more data on the changing face of the mountain.\u00a0 He was convinced it would fail and trigger the largest landslide in history and such an event would uncork the eruption they were still debating.\u00a0 Would happen at all?\u00a0 The Survey members, many of whom were some of the best surveyors in the USGS, didn\u2019t take his suggestions seriously and they blamed Crandell for bringing Voight into the mix.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On April 12, the director of the USGS, Bill Menard, came to inspect the mountain himself.\u00a0 He was a brilliant oceanographer who had been appointed to his position, but he was a political appointee with no experience with volcanoes.\u00a0 A caravan that included Menard, Mullineaux and various other Survey team members made their way to the Timberline parking lot to get a close up view.\u00a0 Mullineaux was very familiar with Mount St. Helens but he had only seen photographs over the course of the monitoring.\u00a0 One look at the north face made his blood run cold – Voight\u2019s assessment of the situation had been spot on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Thompson described the inspection visit:\u00a0 \u201cIn the last few weeks, Mullineaux had seen pictures taken by observers.\u00a0 But now, standing on the north flank and looking up the mountain, he felt queasy.\u00a0 The upper part of the north face was grotesquely distorted,\u00a0 Above him was a gigantic bulge that looked as if someone had put a fist through the back of the mountain, leaving broken circles of cracked snow and ice above the timberline.\u00a0 The new feature had risen so quickly that it was difficult for a geologist such as Mullineaux to imagine the force that had created it.\u00a0 Mullineaux recalled, \u2018I had been there many times, but from the [aerial] pictures I had just not understood how much change had taken place and how threatening that thing looked.\u00a0 It looked like a failure about to occur.\u00a0 The bulge was terrifying.\u00a0 I wanted to turn around and leave.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When all of Dr. Voight\u2019s predictions were proved out, the mountain proved to be much more of a beast than even he had expected.\u00a0 Infrared film of the bulge had been taken but would not be processed until after the May 18 eruption.\u00a0 It showed increased heat signatures around the upper edge of the dome resembling the perforations one sees in a notebook tablet.\u00a0 When an earthquake shook it loose, two things happened in quick succession:\u00a0 The massive landslide Voight had warned about began (it would be the largest ever recorded).\u00a0 With the weight of this overlying rock removed, the pressure built inside the mountain uncorked to the side, not up as they expected it to.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The cascade of destruction that followed was terrifying in its ferocity.\u00a0 The bulge initially slid downhill at 100 miles per hour in the first 30 seconds and eleven seconds later it was traveling at 150 mph.\u00a0 At his vantage point on\u00a0 Coldwater ridge (six miles away and supposedly outside the expected blast zone), Dave Johnson radioed, \u201cVancouver, Vancouver:\u00a0 This is it!\u201d\u00a0 A minute after the landslide had begun, two massive explosions the equivalent of ten million tons of TNT burst from the peak in his direction.\u00a0 Johnston was never heard from again and his body remains entombed under tens of feet of debris.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Working for the Washington Department of Emergency Services, volunteer observer Gerald Martin was camped nearby and reported, \u201cNow we\u2019ve got a whole great big eruption out of the crater and we got another opened up on the west side.\u00a0 The whole west side –\u00a0 northwest side is sliding down.\u00a0 Okay, boys, we got it, boys, the northwest section and north section is blowing up, coming over the ridge towards me.\u00a0 I\u2019m gonna back outta here.\u00a0 Gentlemen, the, uh, camper and car sitting over to the south of me (Johnston\u2019s camp) is covered.\u00a0 It\u2019s gonna get me, too.\u00a0 We can\u2019t get out of here.\u201d\u00a0 He was right\u00a0 – it did get him, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the end, there were 57 deaths and about $1 billion in damages.\u00a0 The eruption removed 1,370 feet from St. Helen\u2019s top, blasted out over 3 billion cubic yards of ash and debris and spread 540 million tons of ash over 22,000 square miles.\u00a0 61,200 acres of National Forest and some 1.6 billion board feet of timber were destroyed (as were 100 miles of streams and thousands of big game animals).\u00a0 The previously mentioned Harry Glicken was supposed to have been at his post at Coldwater II but had traded shifts with Johnston to attend a meeting in California.\u00a0 Johnston had been his mentor and he suffered from survivor\u2019s guilt for the rest of his own brief life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In Part 2 of <\/span>Volcano Cowboys<\/span><\/i>, we will examine how the eruption of Mount St. Helens affected some of the scientists who were there on May 18, 1980 and the future of volcanology itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – although in this case, it is a Top Piece Audio only – Jimmy Buffett’s\u00a0Volcano f<\/em>rom 1979<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Do you need to be a little bit crazy to be a volcanologist?\u00a0 I used to show a video to my Geography \/ Earth Science classes that featured a French couple named Katia and Maurice Krafft.\u00a0 As he talked about what it is like to work on an active volcano, Maurice described the chaotic environment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3677,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions\/3677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}