Mount Rainier Volcano is a Ticking Time Bomb

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• published: 12 Jan 2014
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Mount Rainier is a ticking time bomb that could dwarf the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, sending massive lahars and mudslides toward the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area. The most recent recorded volcanic eruption was between 1820 and 1854, but many eyewitnesses reported eruptive activity in 1858, 1870, 1879, 1882 and 1894 as well. Although Mount Rainier is an active volcano, as of 2010 there was no evidence of an imminent eruption. However, an eruption could be devastating for all areas surrounding the volcano. Mount Rainier is currently listed as a Decade Volcano, or one of the 16 volcanoes with the greatest likelihood of causing great loss of life and property if eruptive activity resumes. If Mt. Rainier were to erupt as powerfully as Mount St. Helens did in its May 18, 1980, eruption, the effect would be cumulatively greater, because of the far more massive amounts of glacial ice locked on the volcano compared to Mount St. Helens and the vastly more heavily populated areas surrounding Rainier. Lahars from Rainier pose the most risk to life and property, as many communities lie atop older lahar deposits. According to USGS, about 150,000 people live on top of old lahar deposits of Rainier. Not only is there much ice atop the volcano, the volcano is also slowly being weakened by hydrothermal activity. According to Geoff Clayton, a geologist with a Washington State Geology firm, RH2 Engineering, a repeat of the Osceola mudflow would destroy Enumclaw, Orting, Kent, Auburn, Puyallup, Sumner and all of Renton. Such a mudflow might also reach down the Duwamish estuary and destroy parts of downtown Seattle, and cause tsunamis in Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Another Cascade Arc volcano with similar hazards is Mount Meager in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, which has produced several large landslides in the past 8,000 years, as well as an eruption 2,350 years ago that was similar in size to Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption. Rainier is also capable of producing pyroclastic flows and expelling lava. According to K. Scott, a scientist with the USGS: "A home built in any of the probabilistically defined inundation areas on the new maps is more likely to be damaged or destroyed by a lahar than by fire...For example, a home built in an area that would be inundated every 100 years, on the average, is 27 times more likely to be damaged or destroyed by a flow than by fire. People know the danger of fire, so they buy fire insurance and they have smoke alarms, but most people are not aware of the risks of lahars, and few have applicable flood insurance." The volcanic risk is somewhat mitigated by lahar warning sirens and escape route signs in Pierce County. The more populous King County is also in the Lahar area, but currently has no zoning restrictions due to volcanic hazard. More recently (since 2001) funding from the federal government for lahar protection in the area has dried up, leading local authorities in at-risk cities like Orting to fear a disaster similar to the Armero tragedy.