What lies beneath Mt. Rainier?

Paul Lunsford

Mount Rainier is a dormant volcano that lies in the Pacific Ring of
Fire, which is the largest ring of active volcanoes in the world.
More than 40 percent of the volcanoes in the ring are actively
reoccurring and the rest are due to erupt within the next several
hundred years. Some might ask why this is relevant to us right now
because the volcanoes will most likely not erupt in our lifetime but
it will in our grandchildren if not children’s era. And to me that
would be horrible to know that it is a good possibility that the
eruption could be the end to my family. Knowing that this volcano will
erupt soon makes me want to know when it will erupt? What will happen
to the surrounding forests, ecosystems, towns, and cities?
Washington is an amazing place to live due to the beautiful, lush
forests, high snow topped Cascades and Olympic Mountain Ranges, and of
course the thriving metropolitan cities such as Seattle, Bellingham,
Belleview, and Tacoma. Also the amazing fertile soils of the Green
River Valley, Sumner Valley and Puyallup Valley. The main reason the
soil in these valleys is so fertile is because of all the sediments
the Lahar mudflows that swept down from Mt. Rainier for the past
10,000 years, the last known Lahar was approximately 500 years ago.
“Moving at speeds up to 80 kilometers per hour, a lahar would race
like a wall of wet, turbulent concrete into the valley. During such an
event, students and other valley residents would have only 45 minutes
to seek higher ground before being inundated with a fast-moving slurry
of mud, rock and water as thick as 10 meters (about 30 feet)
deep”(Pinsker). This passage confirms that when Mt. Rainier erupts it
will be pandemonium, property, memories and lives will be lost.
With all that said there is still the side of when the Volcano erupts
with the magma how far will it flow to? Will it be an eruption like
Mt. Saint Helens in 1980?
Will it cause a chain reaction with the other volcanoes in the Pacific
Ring of Fire? According to geologists the eruption of Mt. Rainier in
the first half of the 19th century would most likely reoccur when the
next eruption occurs. The Osceola Mudflow was the name of the massive
mudflow that raged down Mt. Rainier, through the river valleys and
into the Pudget Sound. “The eruption that we can expect in the future
would consist of ballistic projectiles, tephra, pyroclastic flows,
volcanic gases, landslides, and glacial outburst floods”(Think Quest).
Ballistic projectiles are the flaming chunks of rock that will blow
off the top of the mountain that have a range of about 3 miles. Tephra
is this superheated volcanic ash that when lands will catch anything
on fire, and if 4 or more inches accumulate on a structure the
structure will collapse due to the weight of the ash, the Mt. saint
Helens eruption was mostly tephra. Pyroclastic flows are heated
mudflows that will encase everything it runs over like a quickset
concrete mixed with noxious volcanic gasses and ash.




Works cited

Lisa M. Pinsker.“Paths of Destruction: The Hidden Threat at Mount
Rainier.”GeoTimes, April 2004: September 18, 2011


Mt. Rainier. “Think Quest”. September 18, 2011
http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00472/Mount_Rainier_paragraphs.htm