Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The P-N-Dub versus the Volcano
One of the things about the P-N-Dub (and that means PACIFIC NORTHWEST, to the many people who STILL haven't figured that out in spite of my explaining it several different times) that is notable besides the abundance of salmon, coffee, Costcos, and Windows billionaires, is our lovely natural scenery. We have beautiful bays, verdant year-round evergreen forests, mighty rivers (as anyone who, like me, repeatedly failed at successfully sailing their wagon down the Columbia River from the Dalles at the end of the elementary school "Oregon Trail" computer game can attest), crashing Pacific surf, and majestic mountains. Our largest and most famous mountain, for which our tastiest and most famous local beer Vitamin R is formally named, can be seen here in all its snow-capped glory: Mt. Rainier, known as "Tahoma" by the local Native American tribes, towering over Tacoma, a city whose name is also derived from its magnificence.
Yes, it's very breathtaking and awe-inspiring (as is the hideously triangular outdoor wallpaper design on the Tacompton Dome). Adding to its impressiveness is the fact that Mt. Rainier is an active volcano. It hasn't erupted in 500 years, but apparently it's due any time now. After Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, it occurred to the US geological survey that Mt. Rainier might also blow its top. However, unlike Mt. St. Helens, which is in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Mt. Rainier towers over the heavily populated Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, the land that spawned yours truly. Therefore, the possibility for mass casualties and subsequent FEMA ineptitude in the event of a catastrophic eruption is considerably more worrisome regarding Rainier than St. Helens.
Apparently the big eruption, when it occurs, will not be like those you see on a tropical island or like what happened at the end of LOTR: Return of the King after the One Ring was destroyed, with lava spouting out and flowing everywhere. There will be plenty of lava, but nobody will be able to see it unless they are inside the crater at the time of eruption, a vantage point that equates to instant death. All that magma trying to spurt out of the mountain will hit the underside of Rainier's scenic snowy peak, which is actually billions of gallons of water frozen into several huge-ass glaciers. Those glaciers will instantly liquefy, forming clouds of superheated sulfuric acid gas (called the "pyroclastic flow") and giant walls of boiling mud (called "lahars") that will rocket down the mountainside at the speed of an F-16 fighter jet. While the pyroclastic flow can mix with the hot ash flying out of the mountain to create severe lightning storms and sulfuric acid rainstorms and that's pretty dangerous, the lahars are worse. They will pick up everything, from houses to giant boulders to entire forests, as they speed down the mountain to destroy the towns below. Obviously when the geologists realized that this has a very high probability of happening sometime within the next century, they concluded that maybe a little planning was in order.
My high school best friend G-Boner grew up about ten minutes away from my parents' house in a town called Orting. Orting is located in a valley at the confluence of several riverbeds formed by ancient glaciers leaking off Mt. Rainier. If the mountain erupts, geologists say it's highly likely that a lahar 30-100 feet in height will bury Orting almost immediately. They estimate that the people in Orting will have 30-40 minutes to evacuate before its curtains for them. This is so imminent that when I was in college, a lot of my friends took a Rocks for Jocks course called "Natural Disasters." The hypothetical eruption of Mt. Rainier formed the basis for the ENTIRE COURSE, and everyone in it had to form a group and make a detailed presentation about all the ways my hometown and the surrounding areas are seriously, unequivocally, unfixably fucked. A couple of my friends formed a group and actually incorporated video footage of an interview with me answering questions like, "How does it feel to live in the shadow of impending destruction?" and "Do you experience any anxiety that your friends, family, dog, and everything you grew up knowing might be wiped out at any moment?" and (my favorite) "Are you terrified of seismic activity?" (One popular theory is that an earthquake might set off an eruption).
Fortunately, I don't have to experience constant anxiety while I'm home visiting the P-N-Dub, because the area is prepared. Valleys that will presumably be buried in lahars have installed sirens, and there are various emergency notification alert systems using phones, radio, and TV announcements that will warn us to drop what we're doing and get the fuck out of the lahar zone. For several years, signs advising people of "volcano evacuation routes" have been placed at the bottom of various elevated areas, and basically instruct people that in the event of an eruption, they should literally head for the hills.
I arrived back in the P-N-Dub right in time for a Pierce County-wide lahar drill. Apparently, a bunch of the sirens in such distinguished towns as McMillen and Alderton didn't work, and now the county is freaking out. Apparently, even though these towns have a killer view of the Rainier, none of the inbred dumbasses living there will be perturbed when they hear really loud EXPLODING SOUND, look up, and notice A GIANT FUCKING MUSHROOM CLOUD COMING OUT OF IT:
By the way, that's Mt. St. Helens, and it's like Rainier's kid sister. St. Helens was way smaller, with substantially less glacial mass on top of it, and this is what it did. Mt. Rainier's emissions will be at least twice as big and frightening. If you can't see the fucking mushroom cloud coming out of Rainier, then you had better be blind, because I don't see how you could miss it otherwise. Even if one of these valley-dwellers is too blind or stupid to see an intact mushroom cloud, one would think that sky being blotted out by a huge Apocalyptic-looking curtain of volcanic ash would suggest that it might be time to check out that volcano evacuation route. This is another picture from when St. Helens erupted in 1980. I guarantee that if I walked outside and saw this going on, I wouldn't respond by shrugging and noting, "Wow, the sky sure does look weird today." I mean, we are also famous for our cloudy skies here in the P-N-Dub, but there's overcast with a slight chance of rain and then there's overcast with a 100% chance of Biblically proportioned fire and brimstone, and this is the latter.
My personal opinion is that if the mountain blows and you need a siren or a phone call from the county sheriff to tell you that it's time to make like a tree and leave your double-wide behind alongside the Orting-Kapowsin highway, you would be doing our species a favor by staying right where you are and allowing the lahars to crush you and all those in your inferior gene pool to dust. Who needs eugenics when we've got mother nature, right?
On the bright side, when the mountain blows, my family and I will probably all get FEMA checks to spend on bags of oo-wee and baby mama's new weaves. Since all the dumb people will have succumbed to the fury of the lahars because they were too busy sitting around their sketchily financed Rent-a-Center flatscreens watching NASCAR and cooking meth to evacuate, and will subsequently be dead, there will be plenty of disaster relief to go around for the rest of us to spend inappropriately. Score!
Apparently the big eruption, when it occurs, will not be like those you see on a tropical island or like what happened at the end of LOTR: Return of the King after the One Ring was destroyed, with lava spouting out and flowing everywhere. There will be plenty of lava, but nobody will be able to see it unless they are inside the crater at the time of eruption, a vantage point that equates to instant death. All that magma trying to spurt out of the mountain will hit the underside of Rainier's scenic snowy peak, which is actually billions of gallons of water frozen into several huge-ass glaciers. Those glaciers will instantly liquefy, forming clouds of superheated sulfuric acid gas (called the "pyroclastic flow") and giant walls of boiling mud (called "lahars") that will rocket down the mountainside at the speed of an F-16 fighter jet. While the pyroclastic flow can mix with the hot ash flying out of the mountain to create severe lightning storms and sulfuric acid rainstorms and that's pretty dangerous, the lahars are worse. They will pick up everything, from houses to giant boulders to entire forests, as they speed down the mountain to destroy the towns below. Obviously when the geologists realized that this has a very high probability of happening sometime within the next century, they concluded that maybe a little planning was in order.
My high school best friend G-Boner grew up about ten minutes away from my parents' house in a town called Orting. Orting is located in a valley at the confluence of several riverbeds formed by ancient glaciers leaking off Mt. Rainier. If the mountain erupts, geologists say it's highly likely that a lahar 30-100 feet in height will bury Orting almost immediately. They estimate that the people in Orting will have 30-40 minutes to evacuate before its curtains for them. This is so imminent that when I was in college, a lot of my friends took a Rocks for Jocks course called "Natural Disasters." The hypothetical eruption of Mt. Rainier formed the basis for the ENTIRE COURSE, and everyone in it had to form a group and make a detailed presentation about all the ways my hometown and the surrounding areas are seriously, unequivocally, unfixably fucked. A couple of my friends formed a group and actually incorporated video footage of an interview with me answering questions like, "How does it feel to live in the shadow of impending destruction?" and "Do you experience any anxiety that your friends, family, dog, and everything you grew up knowing might be wiped out at any moment?" and (my favorite) "Are you terrified of seismic activity?" (One popular theory is that an earthquake might set off an eruption).
Fortunately, I don't have to experience constant anxiety while I'm home visiting the P-N-Dub, because the area is prepared. Valleys that will presumably be buried in lahars have installed sirens, and there are various emergency notification alert systems using phones, radio, and TV announcements that will warn us to drop what we're doing and get the fuck out of the lahar zone. For several years, signs advising people of "volcano evacuation routes" have been placed at the bottom of various elevated areas, and basically instruct people that in the event of an eruption, they should literally head for the hills.
I arrived back in the P-N-Dub right in time for a Pierce County-wide lahar drill. Apparently, a bunch of the sirens in such distinguished towns as McMillen and Alderton didn't work, and now the county is freaking out. Apparently, even though these towns have a killer view of the Rainier, none of the inbred dumbasses living there will be perturbed when they hear really loud EXPLODING SOUND, look up, and notice A GIANT FUCKING MUSHROOM CLOUD COMING OUT OF IT:
By the way, that's Mt. St. Helens, and it's like Rainier's kid sister. St. Helens was way smaller, with substantially less glacial mass on top of it, and this is what it did. Mt. Rainier's emissions will be at least twice as big and frightening. If you can't see the fucking mushroom cloud coming out of Rainier, then you had better be blind, because I don't see how you could miss it otherwise. Even if one of these valley-dwellers is too blind or stupid to see an intact mushroom cloud, one would think that sky being blotted out by a huge Apocalyptic-looking curtain of volcanic ash would suggest that it might be time to check out that volcano evacuation route. This is another picture from when St. Helens erupted in 1980. I guarantee that if I walked outside and saw this going on, I wouldn't respond by shrugging and noting, "Wow, the sky sure does look weird today." I mean, we are also famous for our cloudy skies here in the P-N-Dub, but there's overcast with a slight chance of rain and then there's overcast with a 100% chance of Biblically proportioned fire and brimstone, and this is the latter.
My personal opinion is that if the mountain blows and you need a siren or a phone call from the county sheriff to tell you that it's time to make like a tree and leave your double-wide behind alongside the Orting-Kapowsin highway, you would be doing our species a favor by staying right where you are and allowing the lahars to crush you and all those in your inferior gene pool to dust. Who needs eugenics when we've got mother nature, right?
On the bright side, when the mountain blows, my family and I will probably all get FEMA checks to spend on bags of oo-wee and baby mama's new weaves. Since all the dumb people will have succumbed to the fury of the lahars because they were too busy sitting around their sketchily financed Rent-a-Center flatscreens watching NASCAR and cooking meth to evacuate, and will subsequently be dead, there will be plenty of disaster relief to go around for the rest of us to spend inappropriately. Score!
Labels: natural disaster, oh the horror, P-N-Dub, tragedy
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