ORTING – School officials in Orting are reconsidering their evacuation plans for a catastrophic Mount Rainier mudslide after finding their youngest students were too slow to make it to higher ground on foot.
Orting, in rural Pierce County, sits directly in the likely path of a major lahar, or volcanic mudslide, that scientists predict will one day break loose from Rainier’s western flank.
In that scenario, experts say residents would have about 40 minutes to flee before a 30-foot wall of mud, rock and debris buries the town.
School officials have often debated the best way to evacuate students during a lahar, and have favored fleeing by foot in recent drills to avoid getting caught in traffic.
But they’re rethinking that approach after the latest evacuation drill, on Tuesday, showed that kindergartners and first- and second-graders took about 25 minutes to reach the halfway point on foot.
“We are going back to the drawing board on how to evacuate them,” said school district Superintendent Jeff Davis.
Tuesday’s lahar drills, part of twice-yearly tests of the evacuation system, also found three malfunctioning mudslide warning sirens in the county.
The warning system encompasses nine sirens in Fife, six in Orting, four in Puyallup, three in unincorporated areas of Alderton, McMillin and Riverside, and one each in Milton and Sumner.
The three failing sirens identified this week were at McAlder Elementary School between Orting and Sumner, Chief Leschi School between Puyallup and Tacoma, and Puyallup’s headquarters fire station, county emergency management spokeswoman Gretchen O’Connor said.
County officials plan to replace the McAlder siren, which is older and has failed several times in the past. O’Connor said officials were unsure why the Chief Leschi siren, one of newest, wailed for about 10 seconds and stopped, instead of sounding for the full five minutes.
In Puyallup, Fire Chief Merle Frank said one failing siren was the best test result his city has seen in such drills.
“We are going to have a technician look at it,” Frank said. “But everything else went off.”
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