Scientist David Johnston was the Paul Revere of the Mount St. Helens disaster. He was also one of the volcano's 57 victims.

The Big Picture photo site comes through spectacularly again. curating stunning images of the eruption of Mount. St. Helens in Washington in 1980. It was a colossal and shocking natural disaster that began with an earthquake. Soon the volcano erupted and everything was fire, steam, rock, ash, clouds, dust and mud. The explosions lasted for ten hours, razed forests and reached 80,000 feet into the atmosphere. You should definitely look at the entire set of images, “Mount St. Helens, 30 Years Ago.” Even the photos taken just prior to the eruption are chillingly evocative. The caption for the above photo of David Johnston:

“In this May 17, 1980 photo, 30-year old volcanologist David Johnston is shown in the evening at his camp near what is now known as Johnston Ridge near Mount St. Helens. At 8:32 a.m. the next morning, Johnston radioed a message to the USGS headquarters: “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!”, shortly before he was killed by the massive eruption of the volcano that also killed 56 others.”