Mount Rainier is considered a sleeping giant that will one day awaken.
It’s due for another major eruption after the last one 150 years ago.
The USGS recently concluded as part of its survey on volcano hazards,
that Rainier is the third most dangerous volcano in the United States.
One reason is that it's so close to so many people.
“We would be concerned on Mount Rainier, even with the heating-up
process, because even the little kind of deformation we're seeing at the
dome crater floor could be enough to break off a chunk of mountain and
then, combined with water, could produce lahar debris flow that would
threaten downstream communities," said Dr. Bill Steele, University of
Washington seismologist.
Scientists say there is more ice and snow on the top of Mt. Rainier than
on all the other Cascade volcanos combined. It would not take an
explosive 1980-style St. Helens eruption to create a disaster for people
downstream of Mount Rainier, even if just part of the huge ice cap were
to melt.
Pierce County Emergency Management is constantly challenging its
readiness for a mass evacuation with 14 lahar warning sirens telling
residents to head for higher ground.
“There are certain kinds of these biblical disasters where the only
thing you can do is get out of harm's way, there's no other
alternative,” said Steve Bailey of Pierce County Emergency Management.
When it does melt, scientists say the flood of mud and water, or lahar,
that will come down from Rainier will be even thicker than what came
down from St. Helens.
KING
But it's in the path of the Puyallup Glacier, where homes are being
built and sold. It’s an opportunity for people to buy an affordable
house in an otherwise expensive Puget Sound housing market.
And communities, including Orting, are expanding even though the volcano
threat is clearly posted on evacuation signs. The lahar warning siren in
the middle of town.
“There's an old saying, ‘Never be afraid to leave your luggage,’” said
John Carmichael, a Sumner resident. “Get yourself out, leave the rest of
it. Come back and dig it out. If it's not, you start over. But get your
family out. That's the key.”
John and Shirley Carmichael live in nearby Sumner. They're accutely
aware that there is a risk and have hosted a neighborhood emergency
preparedness meeting in their home.
“It may not happen for 100 years, we don't know that,” said Shirley
Carmichael. “But if we're prepared, we'll feel a lot safer about it.”
So what are the chances? A major lahar on Mt. Rainier happens about once
every 500 to 1000 years. And it's been about 550 years since the last
one. That means the window is open. It could be hundreds of years before
it happens again. Or it could be tomorrow.
“Because of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier is regarded much more as a
volcano, capable of producing erruptions and very serious hazards,” said
Willie Scott of the USGS.
Three years ago Mount Rainier experienced a glacial outburst, a major
release of debris that triggered the emergency response system. Water
and boulders came rushing down the Nisqually River.
Now, every three months, emergency management officials and
representatives from cities and school districts meet at Mt. Rainier
National Park to work on their evacuation plans and consider the latest
science. But they still don’t have all the answers.
“We have tried to marry the public safety policy and the scientific
information as best we can to say the Puyallup is our issue, our big
public safety issue,” said Bailey.
But how far do these mud flows travel? According to the USGS, over the
last 5,000 years, there's evidence through Ashford, Elbe, Orting,
Puyallup, Auburn, Commencement Bay, Kent and even Renton.
“It's much more likely that that kind of event will follow some sort of
warning,” Scott said.
The Puyallup valley has the most people, but would also get the most
warning from lahar monitors on the mountain. It would probably take 40
minutes in Orting for people to follow evacuation signs and get to
higher ground.
Many schools in Orting are situated right along the river and with only
one road going in an out of town, students are the ones who will need
another place to go. One idea is to build a bridge along the Puyallup
and Carbon rivers.
KING
A false activation of the lahar early warning system in Orting, Wash. Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2004 sent some people fleeing for higher ground.
Still, Mount Rainier isn't scaring anyone out of town. Roughly 30,000
Puyallup River Valley residents are in direct danger in a volcanic
eruption, along with more than 100,000 people living in Mount Rainier's
six other valleys. The towns at risk would be Orting, Sumner, Ashford,
Elbe, Packwood, Randle, Greenwater and parts of Puyallup. The flow could
also affect parts of Tacoma, Buckley and Enumclaw.
In Ashford last year, an anonomous donor supplied NOAA weather radios
that will warn residents of an impending lahar.
Many other volcanoes have little or no regular monitoring and need to be
watched for potential eruptions, a recent report from the U.S.
Geological Survey warned. These include nine volcanoes in the Cascade
Range -- Rainier, Hood, Shasta, South Sister, Lassen, Crater Lake,
Baker, Glacier Peak and Newberry.
Although earthquakes at Mount Rainier are monitored by the University of
Washington and the USGS, and their shapes are measured regularly by
staff of the USGS's Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash.,
it's not enough, said John Ewert of the USGS.
"For the potential threat it represents, Rainier is undermonitored,"
said Ewert said. "When we consider, for instance, that Rainier is very
large and very high so you need a helicopter to put additional
instrumentation there and some areas are inaccessible in winter...With
volcanoes that we believe pose a high level of threat, we don't want to
be in a position to know something is going on and putting (monitoring)
people at risk."
Volcanic eruptions also pose a hazard to aviation because any plane
flying through volcanic ash can experience engine failure.
In the Cascades, the volcanoes that pose the most risk are those with
the most snow and ice -- Baker, Glacier Peak, Rainier, Shasta and Hood.
"They rate very highly in our scheme, they all have a history of
eruptions and lahars that have traveled some distance," Ewert said.
"With snow and ice-clad volcanoes, lahars can travel 50 miles or more.
In the Cascades we have large river valleys whose head waters are by the
volcanoes and lahars can travel long distances at high speeds.
"We want to provide the best early warning we can, and to do that we
need to have in place apppropriate monitoring for those kinds of
volcanoes."
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