The scientist wanted to do her research on Mount Rainier. Mindy Brugman wound up on Mount St. Helens.
The pilot’s flying skills were honed in Vietnam. Mike Cairns wound up on Mount St. Helens.
Brugman and Cairns represent two story threads woven into Tuesday’s episode of a PBS television series, “We’ll Meet Again.”
“Rescued from Mount St. Helens” airs at 8 p.m. on OPB TV, Channel 10.
Cairns is a rescuer in one of the episode’s plot lines; Brugman is a survivor in the other. They shared their stories with our readers on Jan. 14, but also recalled what influenced their paths.
As a Caltech grad student, Brugman researched sliding glaciers.
“I wanted to study the Nisqually Glacier on Mount Rainier,” said Brugman, a senior meteorological researcher in Canada.
Her adviser asked about the most extreme example of that type of glacier.
“Shoestring Glacier on Mount St. Helens,” Brugman told him. “I didn’t really want to go there, but my adviser said it was the best example.”
After a year, she didn’t want to leave: not even on May 17, 1980, when the volcano was in an active phase. Volcanologist David Johnston convinced her to drive back to Vancouver. Johnston died in the eruption the next day.
Cairns, a National Guard helicopter pilot, descended through ash clouds to rescue Sue Nystrom and two other survivors.
He was awarded a National Guard medal. It followed a Purple Heart he received in Vietnam after a 2 a.m. mission. The Cobra gunships were guided by a spotter plane that detected the body heat of enemy troops.
“We were rolling in on a rocket run and the whole sky lit up. There must have been a company of Viet Cong or North Vietnamese” firing automatic weapons. He was wounded when a bullet went through the front of his helmet.
Scene in the library
A Vancouver landmark is part of the episode. Brugman and former Columbian reporter Tom Ryll were filmed in the Vancouver Community Library. Ryll, who was part of our volcano coverage team in 1980, is shown reading archive stories at a fourth-floor microfilm viewer.
The crew contacted library officials in August, Tak Kendrick, Fort Vancouver Regional Library spokesman, said. The crew suggested filming at White Salmon Valley Community Library, but it didn’t pan out.
Kendrick asked whether the crew would be needing a librarian to do any research.
“That was not the case,” he said. “They just wanted a place to film.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
