| Leslie Brown; The News Tribune
Every year, Orting's 1,600 school children prepare for the unthinkable.
They hustle out of their classrooms and onto buses, cramming into cars,
vans and pickup trucks once those buses are full. Teachers shepherd them
every step of the way, remembering the mantra of their training: Stay calm,
they tell themselves; stay calm, they tell the children.
A generation ago, students ducked under their desks, preparing for a nuclear
attack. In the small city of Orting, today's children prepare for a volcano.
And well they should, scientists say.
Orting is built on layers of rock and debris deposited by mudflows that
surged off Mount Rainier hundreds of years ago. The area's flat, fertile
valleys were shaped and filled by these flows as they spilled toward Puget
Sound.
Trees buried eons ago have been unearthed in recent years, found in farm
fields in Orting that are fast becoming housing developments. Stumps of these
ancient trees, like shipwrecked shells poking out of the sea, linger on the
grassy edges of the developments.
It may be decades, even centuries before the mountain erupts again. And
very likely, Orting and the other towns in the lowlands surrounding Rainier
will get ample warning, a month or two of notice as the mountainrumbles awake.
But scientists say the region can't count on that.
Kevin Scott, a research hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, has
found evidence that huge lahars - fast-flowing rivers of mud, trees, rocks,
gravel and water - were triggered by something other than volcanic eruptions.
He and others now believe that one of the mountain's unstable flanks could
simply give way at any time, launching a lahar that could come crashing toward
the valley floor with little if any notice.
So regional, state and federal scientists have begun working with Orting
- the city considered most at risk - gently urging its residents to wake
up to the fact that their beautiful town lies in the shadow of a potentially
deadly volcano.
Initially local officials balked at all this talk of volcanic eruptions.
In 1992, the school district sued Pierce County over the county's insistence
that it not build a new school in what the county called a "volcanic hazard
zone." The school district ultimately dropped its suit.
The city is still not limiting growth within its boundaries, an area geologists
and planners have labeled a volcanic hazard zone. Even so, many observers
say, Orting's response to the volcano is impressive and possibly unprecedented.
They know of no other community in the region or even the country as prepared
for the potential disaster of a volcanic eruption.
"Orting," Scott said, "is beyond the period of denial."
Fire Chief Scott Fielding has put together a comprehensive evacuation
plan that he and Mayor Sam Colorossi recently hand-delivered to the homes
of each of the city's 3,000 residents. New residents are given a copy of
the plan when they sign up for city services.
The school district practices its volcano drill every year. Its record
so far: Teachers have steered all 1,600 students into buses, cars and vans
in 14 minutes. Administrators have figured out where the children would go
- a Mormon church on one of Orting's few hills - and sent notices to their
parents informing them of the plan.
The city has worked with the state, Pierce County and the University of
Washington, trying to make sure Orting is among the first notified should
a lahar get detected by one of the UW's seismic monitors on the flanks of
the mountain.
Orting officials are looking for ways to install an alarm system that
everyone in the city could hear. Should Fielding ever get that call in the
middle of the night telling him a mudflow is headed toward the city, he could
push a button that would sound the alarm.
If it's a false alarm, the siren would be shut off in five minutes, the
evacuation plan states in capital letters. If it's for real, the siren would
wail for 30 minutes.
"I'm planning for the worst-case scenario," Fielding said, "a lahar, up
to 40 feet deep, that would reach Orting in 60 minutes."
Beauty And Risk
Orting is a small city - a town, by most people's definition - cradled
in the lush flatlands between the Carbon and Puyallup rivers.
Its main street boasts only a few amenities - a pharmacy, a couple of
banks, a library. A park with a small playground sits in the center of town.
Small homes and stately ones line the quiet streets. Children walk home
from school. People in the pharmacy, the lumber store, the bank greet each
other by name.
It's this friendly, easy life that draws many to Orting. It's also the
town's immense natural beauty - its rivers, its forests and, of course, its
mountain, an astonishing, blue-white backdrop that very nearly fills the
sky.
"It's a pretty town," said Patty Guynn, who was born in Orting. "Life is good here."
But Orting's striking natural setting also poses hazards few residents
realized until the scientific community began talking to them a couple of
years ago.
Scientists now know that dozens of mudflows streamed off Rainier over
the past 5,000 years, at least six of which reached all the way to the shores
of Puget Sound. They know these lahars drowned the lowlands in rocks and
debris, burying forests and filling in the valley floors.
Lahars are known to follow river channels as they search for the most
logical path off a mountain. With two rivers coursing through its terrain,
Orting, as Scott put it, "is at the mouth of two gun barrels."
What's more, Scott and other scientists believe the Puyallup River has
played host to most of these lahars over the years. The western flank of
the mountain, where the Puyallup begins, today is considered one of the most
geologically fragile.
Other towns are at risk, Scott says. Enumclaw, Sumner and Auburn also
are built on debris left by ancient mudflows. Ashford and Elbe lie close
to the mountain, in the valley carved out by the Nisqually River.
But the risks there are not quite as great, he said.
A lahar plunging down the White River likely would be slowed by Mud Mountain
Dam, giving Enumclaw residents a little more time to clear out. The Nisqually
is a wider channel, giving a lahar a chance to spread out and slow down as
it cascades off the mountain.
The Puyallup River's channel is narrow, deep and free-flowing, Scott noted.
"It would convey a flow to the vicinity of Orting very rapidly," he said.
Common-Sense Response
When state and federal scientists first sat down with Orting officials
four years ago, Fielding, the fire chief, was dazed by what he heard.
"It was shocking information," he said. "I remember thinking, 'Why hadn't we been told this before?'
"I went to school here. I remember clearly the bomb drills. The mountain was not an issue. No one ever talked about it."
Today, Fielding counts himself among Orting's "true believers."
Almost single-handedly, he hammered out an evacuation plan that splits
the city in half, using the only two routes considered safe in the event
of a lahar.
This summer, he hopes to get a portion of the city to practice the drill,
something he says is essential before he can be certain it will work. Fielding
also hopes to conduct a practice evacuation at the Orting Soldiers Home,
where many of the 200 residents are infirm or bedridden. High school drama
students, he suggests, could stand in as the bedridden patients, giving evacuators
a real-life sense of the difficulties they could face.
His plan is simple, he said. Executing it is another thing.
Should an actual evacuation occur, Fielding said, some residents will
want to rush across town to pick up a mother-in-law who doesn't drive or
hurry to the school to locate their children.
"I tell people, 'Have your mother-in-law team up with a neighbor so someone
else will get her out of town. Don't go to the school to get your child because
the schools know what they're doing,' " he said.
People have been supportive, he said. Even so, he knows a lot of residents scoff at all this talk of volcanic eruptions.
"Let's put it this way. We have our believers and our nonbelievers," he said.
"I believe it will happen. The question is when."
Marianne Smith, a second-grade teacher and the school district's emergency
planner, crafted the evacuation plan that the district's 1,600 students practice
each year. The plan, like the one for the city, is a common-sense response
to what she considers a fairly remote danger, she says.
"If we respond by saying, 'We're planning for it,' then people can relax," she said. "We can live with that threat.
"At first, there was denial. There was anger. But we've worked through
that. For the most part, people have come to accept that the volcano is a
potential problem."
Smith's family has its own emergency plan in place. Already prepared for
an earthquake, family members keep their supplies - water, food, clothes
- in bags and packs in a shed behind their home. A wooded hill is nearby.
She has told her two teenage children that if they hear the siren and she's
not home, grab the bags and head for the hill.
"I think I'm probably unusual," she said of her preparedness. "But I'm the emergency planner. I think about these things."
Unwelcome Publicity
Orting's proximity to Rainier has put it on the public radar screen in recent years.
In 1995, members of an NBC camera crew knocked on people's doors, asking
residents what they thought of their backyard volcano. Last month, ABC paid
a visit.
Smithsonian, a monthly magazine, published a lengthy piece on Mount Rainier
last summer, focusing in part on Orting's particular set of dangers.
Some don't like all this publicity.
At the only real estate office in Orting, Jim and Matt Nunnally, a father
and son team, railed against the news media's newfound fascination with volcanic
eruptions.
"Every time you hear something about volcanoes, it's Orting, Orting, Orting,"
said Matt Nunnally. "I'm in real estate. So of course it doesn't help our
business."
Both men said they know of people who have walked away from a home purchase
out of fear of the volcano. One couple actually closed on a deal, then asked
Jim Nunnally to put the lot back on the market the next day, a move that
cost the couple $5,000.
Jim Nunnally, an elderly man who has lived in Orting most of his life,
smiled as he talked of people's fear of the volcano. "My evacuation plan
is this: If I hear it rumble, I'm going to get out."
If the volcano is slowing the community's growth, however, one would hardly
notice. New developments - Whitehawk, the Village Green, High Cedars - are
popping up on the town's outskirts like the latest farm crop, filling in
pastures where dairy cows once grazed.
Homes are selling briskly, real estate agents say. Few buyers ask about the volcano.
Erwin Scholtz stood outside his new, split-level home on a recent evening,
washing his car while a couple of steaks broiled on a nearby grill. A Sumner
native, he said he grew up with the mountain as a backdrop, and today, he
rarely thinks about it.
"We could have bought a bigger home in Tacoma," he said, "but we worried about the crime. It's a lot safer out here."
Besides, he said, nodding toward the horizon where Mount Rainier glinted
through a veil of clouds, Orting's setting is beautiful.
"When it's clear," he said, "that mountain just fills up the sky."
© The News Tribune February 17, 1997
|
