Leaving his teenage drug abuse behind in Oregon, Dustin Weber was seeking a new beginning along California’s rugged far northern coast, happy to be in the land of his mother’s heritage, the Yurok Tribe.
Yet before Weber could get a proper start, the 25-year-old was swept out to sea at the mouth of the Klamath River by a tsunami surge generated thousands of miles away by the earthquake off Japan’s coast.
Rescuers were unable to reach him Friday and called off their efforts; he is presumed dead, though his body has not been found
His would be the first death of a person on the West Coast by a tsunami since 1964, when 11 people in nearby Crescent City died from the surge created by an earthquake in Alaska.