Evacuation route: Gridlock awaits those fleeing lahar

Pierce County is upgrading the Mount Rainier lahar warning system for the Orting and Puyallup Valleys with state grants. OK, let’s say we are given a timely warning. Then what?

State Route 162 is the only highway in the Orting Valley and it has two lanes with narrow shoulders. All connecting roads to this point are also only two lanes wide.

When you consider the number of residents, businesses, customers and deliveries in the valley at a given time, you recognize the scale of loss of life from gridlocked evacuation efforts.

Pierce County is doing its part with an effective warning system and adding a corridor off SR162 at 128th Street East to the Tehaleh plateau. But the Washington Department of Transportation is doing nothing to widen the highway to feed escape routes to higher ground.

WSDOT is even considering adding roundabouts to this corridor to improve traffic flow in lieu of adding lanes. This would restrict an evacuation even more.

Unless SR162 is widened to at least three lanes, which could all flow the same direction during an evacuation, many Orting Valley families would likely perish trying to escape a lahar.

This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Evacuation route: Gridlock awaits those fleeing lahar."