Two steps forward and one step back: That’s one way of describing Pierce County’s efforts to perfect its lahar warning system in the Puyallup Valley.
Such was the case Tuesday during a twice-yearly drill of the system designed to warn people about catastrophic volcanic mudflows from Mount Rainier.
Sirens that have failed to wail in the past went off Tuesday, but others installed recently remained silent during the drill.
The county also recently added the AM 1580 radio station to broadcast emergency messages, but the system failed to automatically switch to the prerecorded message during Tuesday’s test.
“That’s why we have these drills,” said Barbara Nelson, a spokeswoman for Pierce County Emergency Management.
Emergency officials began testing the system at 10 a.m.
For the first time, all five sirens in the City of Puyallup went off, much to the satisfaction of Puyallup Fire Chief Merle Frank.
However, two sirens in Orting and another in the McMillin area had problems, Nelson said. They were all new sirens that were tested for the first time Tuesday.
Orting has five sirens, and a new one at a water well in the south part of town failed to wail. Another siren at City Hall went off about half an hour after the system was activated, said Orting Mayor Cheryl Temple.
In the McMillin area, a siren at McAlder Elementary School failed to activate.
Officials are investigating what went wrong.
They also want to know what happened with the AM radio station, which usually carries information about disaster preparation and was supposed to switch to a test lahar warning.
Steve Bailey, director of Pierce County Emergency Management, said emergency officials can make the switch manually, as they did Tuesday.
For the past several years, Pierce County’s public safety agencies have been installing layers of emergency alerts in the fast-growing Puyallup Valley.
“We have been building the amount of redundancy so that we have many ways to inform people,” Bailey said.
Emergency officials installed monitors on Mount Rainier and 25 sirens down in the valley, from Orting to Fife. They also have been urging residents to buy a weather radio from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which broadcasts emergency alerts.
Last year, Pierce County added a system called Intellicast, or “reverse 911.” It sends alerts to residential phones with a few clicks of a mouse from the county’s Emergency Operations Center, or from any 911 dispatch center in the county.
Intellicast also was tested Tuesday and it worked without a hitch, Bailey said. The phone system has proved itself in real emergencies, too, such as the Puyallup Valley flood last November.
Eijiro Kawada: 253-597-8633
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