The luckiest person on that day was a graduate student named Harry Glicken. He had been manning an observation post 5.7 miles from the mountain, but he had a college placement interview on May 18 in California, and so had left the site the day before the eruption. His place was taken by David Johnston. Johnston was the first to report the volcano exploding; moments later he was dead. His body was never found. Glicken's luck, alas, was temporary. Eleven years later he was one of forty-three scientists and journalists fatally caught up in a lethal outpouring of superheated ash, gases, and molten rock—what is known as a pyroclastic flow—at Mount Unzen in Japan when yet another volcano was catastrophically misread.
那一天最走运的要算是一位名叫哈里·格利肯的研究生。他是离火山9公里处一个观察所的工作人员，但5月18日在加利福尼亚有个大学编班面试，因此在火山爆发前一天离开了现场。他的位置由戴维·约翰斯顿接替。约翰斯顿是第一个报告火山爆发的人，不一会儿，他就死了。他的尸体永远无法找到。哎呀，格利肯也好运不长，11年以后，在日本的云仙岳火山，在又一次报道不准的火山爆发中，43名科学家和记者被喷出的过热的灰烬、气体和熔岩——即所谓的火成碎屑流——吞没，格利肯是其中之一。

Volcanologists may or may not be the worst scientists in the world at making predictions, but they are without question the worst in the world at realizing how bad their predictions are. Less than two years after the Unzen catastrophe another group of volcano watchers, led by Stanley Williams of the University of Arizona, descended into the rim of an active volcano called Galeras in Colombia. Despite the deaths of recent years, only two of the sixteen members of Williams's party wore safety helmets or other protective gear. The volcano erupted, killing six of the scientists, along with three tourists who had followed them, and seriously injuring several others, including Williams himself.
火山学家也许是世界上最不善于作出预言的人，也许不是。但是，他们肯定是最不善于发现自己的预言是多么糟糕的人。云仙岳灾难发生后不到两年，在亚利桑那大学的斯坦利·威廉斯的率领之下，另一组火山观测员走进哥伦比亚一座名叫加莱拉斯火山的活火山口。尽管近来不断死人，威廉斯小组的16名成员只有两人戴了安全帽或别的防护装备。火山喷发了，造成6名科学家死亡，加上3名跟在后面的游客，其他几人受了重伤，包括威廉斯本人。