At the time of the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, Joseph was the public information specialist for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest based in Seattle. He had previous volcanic experience from planning the Forest Service response for the potential eruption of Mt. Baker at the head of the Skagit River. That would have impacted the Puget Sound area, Bellingham, Vancouver and the British Columbia growing area as well as Vancouver Island. It gave him the experience before the Mt. St. Helens eruption of working with the seismology and volcanology scientists at the University of Washington.
As well, during his previous years as a paratrooper and Public Information Officer of the 82d Airborne Division, he had parallel experience in events with wide national and international attention. He as well, graduated from the Defense Department´s specialty course for such officers, called DINFOS.
He applied those skills as the information manager for the Forest Service’s Regional wildfire fighting team and as an instructor for training information specialists at the national wildfire center in Boise, Idaho.
Together with his wife, club member and homeopathy therapist Claudia Thomas, they have lived for 28 years near the Continental Divide east of Mexico City. Their home is close to two volcanos, one of those typically has multiple eruptions or emissions daily.
Program Notes by Mike Madden:
A little over forty years ago University Sunrise Rotary club member Joseph Thomas was monitoring Mt. Baker, northeast of Bellingham, Washington for volcanic activity. Then he received an urgent call to join the response team at Mount St. Helens, which had just erupted.
For about 30 minutes at our Thursday, May 12 meeting, Joseph recounted for us the most significant elements of this historic natural disaster and his own experiences as a key member of the USFS communications team, having erected a makeshift communications center and taking inquiries from news organizations all over the USA and the world.
Joseph noted that as tragic as the loss of the fifty-seven lives was, a worse disaster was serendipitously prevented by the delayed reopening of the park around the mountain. The reopening had been scheduled for the morning that the eruption occurred and possibly hundreds more lives would have been lost had the park been reopened on time.
This and many other specific memories enlivened Joseph’s talk, along with videoclips of new reports from the days surrounding the event.