Lahar siren in downtown Puyallup accidentally goes off. Here’s what activated it
Mount Rainier was quiet Wednesday morning. The lahar siren at a Puyallup fire station was not.
The lahar-warning system at the station at 311 W. Pioneer went off about 10 a.m. The Puyallup Police Department posted on Twitter about 10:30 a.m. that the siren was a false alarm and that it was investigating what happened.
Shortly after noon the agency sent another tweet that identified the culprit at Fire Station 73 as “a malfunctioning part that has now been decommissioned.”
“There is NO lahar, no drill, and no threat to public safety,” Pierce County tweeted.
City spokesperson Eric Johnson told The News Tribune that the malfunctioning part was from an old system.
“When Pierce County upgraded the lahar siren system, the old equipment was still there. We are still trying to figure out the specifics of how it was malfunctioning, but we have decommissioned that completely,” Johnson said. “It has been turned off and the legacy system there has been decommissioned.”
The volume Wednesday was lower than what residents would hear in a true emergency, he said. Other sirens would also be going off, such as the one on top of City Hall downtown, if it was the real thing.
“Had it been an actual lahar, you would definitely hear it,” he said.
Johnson said the city sent out a message about what happened through Puyallup Alerts, an emergency system that calls, texts and emails residents who sign up. Johnson said they sent that message to residents within about a half mile of the fire station.
This story was originally published May 24, 2023 at 1:21 PM.
