Small Town Awaits Awakening of Mt. Rainier

In the shadow of Mt. Rainier, a father pushes his son on a squeaky swing set. A small dog sleeps undisturbed in the middle of a dead-end road. The tall firs lining the main street whisper in the spring breeze.

One day, the peaceful hush of this small town will be broken by a rumble that sounds like a thousand freight trains. If everything works right, sirens will wail and the town’s 4,400 residents will have less than 45 minutes to evacuate -- or be buried by an avalanche of mud and debris tumbling off the flank of Mt. Rainier.

Scientists know that Mt. Rainier, an active volcano, will one day awaken as Mt. St. Helens did in 1980. It could gradually build up and explode, or part of it could simply collapse, perhaps with very little warning. It could happen in 200 years, or it could happen tonight.

“People get burned by these kind of events because they think it can’t happen in their lifetime,” said Willie Scott, a U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist. “We can’t rule out a flow of troublesome size being generated almost at any time.”

A mudflow would likely be troublesome indeed for Orting, about 40 miles south of Seattle. Two rivers, the Carbon and the Puyallup, drain off the mountain, hug the town and converge just beyond it, putting Orting squarely in the mountain’s strike zone. The town was built atop a 500-year-old mudflow that buried the valley 30 feet deep.

Construction crews working on housing developments for Orting’s growing population have dug up massive tree stumps -- the remnants of a forest buried there the last time that Mt. Rainier hiccuped.

The USGS ranks Mt. Rainier as the third most dangerous volcano in the nation, after Kilauea on Hawaii’s Big Island and Mt. St. Helens, both of which are active. Other studies call Rainier the most dangerous volcano in the world -- not just for its explosive potential, but because of the 3 million people who live in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area. At least 100,000 people live on top of old Rainier mudflows that have solidified.

Dawn So is one of them. When she moved to Orting from SeaTac two years ago, she didn’t worry about volcanoes or mudflows. She was just looking for a good place to rear her children and open a quilting store.

“I wanted to have my kids in a better school district, a smaller town,” she said. “I like to let them play in the front yard without having to worry about them.”

She and her children have planned their escape routes, and she’s confident that they could get to high ground in time. But she doesn’t spend much time thinking about Rainier’s threat.

“It’s such a highly improbable situation,” she said. “Disasters can happen wherever you’re at.”

Disaster could strike in at least three different ways. The mountain could go through a Mt. St. Helens-type buildup, with magma rising in the mountain’s core and then exploding, literally blowing Rainier’s top and sending mudflows crashing down on the valleys below.

Or the magma could build up inside the mountain, never explode, but still trigger mudflows by weakening the rock and melting glaciers.

Or part of the mountain could simply collapse without any magma buildup, weakened by centuries of hot, acidic liquid coursing through the rock. Scott said the west flank of Mt. Rainier, overlooking the Puyallup River valley, was the oldest part of Mt. Rainier and thus the most likely to collapse.

In any case, rock and mud would mix with melted glaciers to create a flow with the consistency of concrete, moving as fast as 50 miles per hour. The mudflow would sweep down the valleys, picking up trees, bridges and whatever else got in its way.

Most of the mudflows from Mt. Rainier were triggered by an eruption, Scott said. But the most recent, the Electron mudflow that buried the Orting region 500 years ago, didn’t seem to follow that pattern.

“Maybe it was just a gradual weakening,” Scott said. “That one sort of keeps us honest.”

About 5,600 years ago, the Osceola mudflow blanketed about 200 square miles northwest of the mountain. The flows reached as far north as Kent, a Seattle suburb, and drained west into Commencement Bay, now the site of the Port of Tacoma.

The risk of catastrophe every couple thousand of years hasn’t stopped brisk development on ancient mudflows. But as scientists identified Rainier as a threat in the decades after Mt. St. Helens’ eruption, government officials and residents have begun preparing.

Recently, federal, state and local officials gathered at Fort Lewis for an exercise called “Cascade Fury III” -- simulating the emergency response to an earthquake, eruption and massive mudflow from Rainier. Later this month, Orting schools will practice a drill familiar to most students by now -- evacuating and walking two miles to higher ground.

Chuck Morrison has been lobbying for years to make that walk faster and easier. He wants to build bridges and a path so that Orting students can evacuate to a bluff about half a mile away, rather than high-tailing it across town.

This year’s state budget includes $1.7 million to start engineering and planning the project. Morrison hopes to get more money from the federal government and private donors to finish the “Bridge for Kids.”

Some locals have welcomed his activism, while others roll their eyes.

“Don’t keep talking about that mountain! I’m sick of hearing about it,” said James Nunnally, 69, whose family moved to Orting when he was 4. He’d rather see the state spend money on roads to handle Orting’s growing number of commuters than on a pedestrian bridge.

“It’s a farce,” Nunnally said.

Morrison shrugs off criticism. A Tacoma resident, he made the pedestrian bridge his crusade after falling in love with Orting’s rich railroad history and scenic beauty. He understands what draws people to a volcano’s backyard.

“This place is gorgeous,” Morrison said, standing on the edge of the town square, the mountain shrouded by clouds behind him. “I would love to live here.”