‘Mount Baker doesn’t erupt very often, but it has the ability to have a big impact’

A good portion of the year, we forget that it’s even there. Obscured by clouds during the rainy season and haze in the summer fire season, those of us in western Whatcom County probably only get to actually see Mount Baker about half the time.

When the mountain does make an appearance, it’s simply magnificent — dwarfing the City of Subdued Excitement from across Bellingham Bay, standing prominently above farms in northern parts of the county and adding that postcard-like perfection to the brilliant sunrise photos that have filled our social media feeds the past couple of weeks.

But don’t let the idyllic appearance fool you. This is a 10,781-foot stratovolcano, capable of causing just as much destruction and mayhem as was created nearly four decades ago by her Cascade Range sister to the south, Mount St. Helens.

“Mount Baker doesn’t erupt very often, but it has the ability to have a big impact on our area,” U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geologist Cynthia Gardner said during the 2018 Mount Baker Volcano Eruption Exercise, hosted earlier this week by the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office Division of Emergency Management.

The good news, though, is that this week’s exercise showed the region has countless smart, talented and well-trained people ready to spring into action to lead us through a catastrophe of that scale — or even larger — if the need ever arises.

Gardner said Mount Baker hasn’t had any large explosions or lahars since the 1800s and the last major activity was nearly 6,750 years ago.

But it has a fiery past and could awaken again. The mountain ejected a small plume of ash, had a few minor explosions and created a small lahar in 1975.

Should the volcano awaken, a study by Whatcom County’s Division of Emergency Management estimated that nearly $8 billion worth of private, agricultural, infrastructure, commercial, government and natural resources could be at risk from lahars and ashfall.

It is because of the potential of a large-scale impact that the week-long exercise was held at the Whatcom Unified Emergency Operations Center (EOC) near Bellingham International Airport and at sites throughout the county, state and country and even across the border in Canada.

An alphabet soup of acronym agencies from from all levels of government joined with regional law enforcement, fire departments, elected officials’ offices, private stakeholders, military liaisons, communications experts and volunteer groups to practice for the unthinkable happening — simulating a Mount Baker eruption and volcanic mudflow, or lahar, and orchestrating the region’s response.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to embed at the Emergency Operations Center during the exercise, mostly observing during Wednesday’s full-scale simulation, but also offering advice on what sort of information media organizations would clamor for if the event were real.

I admit, the opportunity intrigued me from the onset. In addition to a chance to meet a number of people I would work with in the event of a real emergency, I’m a little bit of a geek for geologic events, having taken an upper-level course titled “Natural Disasters” to fulfill a science requirement two and a half decades ago while at the University of Colorado.

Simulated eruption

The volcano simulation, which was sculpted with the help of scientists from the USGS and National Weather Service (NWS) and experts in other fields, actually started six weeks earlier with signs that Mount Baker was “waking up” from its slumber — early warnings that we would expect to receive weeks and months before the mountain actually would erupt.

In Wednesday’s simulation, the USGS detected a large seismic event at Sherman Crater — an area located south of Mount Baker’s summit that regularly vents steam and gasses — and an explosive sound at 2:30 a.m.

Shortly afterward, the NWS detected a simulated plume of ash shooting 15,000 feet into the air, and moments later, river sensors along the middle fork of the Nooksack River began to go offline, indicating a simulated lahar full of mud, ash and just about everything else it could pick up along the way, rolling at approximately 20 mph toward Whatcom’s riverside communities downstream.

“From what I have heard, we have people in imminent danger from the lahar and many others who could be impacted by ashfall,” Sheriff Bill Elfo, who served as Incident Commander as he would in a real emergency, told the approximately 200 people gathered Wednesday at EOC for the simulation.

And with that, all 200 people sprang into action in a dizzying beehive of activity, calm discussions, planning, information gathering and color-coded vests, designating the predetermined roles each would fill within the Incident Command System — white for command staff, blue for planning and strategy, red for operations, yellow for logistics and green for finance and administration.

Each would serve a vital role in making sure Whatcom County would have the resources, information, communications and leadership to navigate a disaster of this magnitude.

The EOC wasn’t the only place participating in the exercise in Whatcom County. St. Joseph hospital also simulated receiving patients from a lahar event, while volunteer, law enforcement and military teams practiced going out in the field to evacuate communities that would be affected, look for survivors or those who needed assistance and communicate real-time information back to the EOC so decisions could be made.

Cross-border cooperation

The EOC also tested and utilized conferencing systems with similar groups in Abottsford, B.C., state agencies in Olympia and federal agencies in Washington D.C. to help create a unified response to real-time information.

John Gargett, the exercise commander and deputy director of the Sheriff’s Office Division of Emergency Management, estimated another 350 people involved in Wednesday’s exercise outside the EOC — an impressive total, but only a fraction of the estimated 2,000- to 3,000-person response that would be necessary if the simulation were real. Gargett said no extra funding was needed for the exercise, as each agency worked within its usual budgetary constraints.

“As far as I know, this is the largest exercise of this kind involving both sides of an international border,” Gargett told the Herald Wednesday. “And that’s a very important part of this event — U.S. and Canadian response communicating, supporting and coordinating with each other is vital.”

Gargett said he wasn’t looking for perfection with this exercise — in fact, he’d probably be more worried if problems didn’t pop up. Break downs offer areas for growth and improvement.

And he tried to push the system to its limits, injecting curve balls into the simulation, just as they would come in a real emergency.

By the end of the day, the simulated volcano eruption had subsided and lahar stalled near Nugents Corner. Gardner said the area avoided the “worst case scenario.”

To the untrained eye, the EOC and those in the field seemed to roll with the punches and navigate all obstacles brilliantly. My two biggest takeaways from the simulation were:

1. Whatcom County and the region have a large group of smart, talented, invested people to lead it should a potentially disastrous event such as this occur. They’d be plenty capable in any situation, whether it was a volcano, an earthquake, flooding, or any other type of event.

Gargett said more than 60 organizations in Whatcom County, Washington state, the United States and Canada would have a hand in a response to a real Mount Baker eruption and lahar event. Judging by Wednesday, that might even be a bit of an understatement.

2. The way those 60-plus organizations fit and work together was impressive under the ICS. To an outsider, it appeared all the cogs fit together and turned with clockwork precision, calmly getting resources, information and guidance to the places it was needed.

“I thought the exercise went really well,” Elfo said after Wednesday’s simulation had concluded. “We’re going to evaluate how everything went and there will always be areas you can improve. Then it’s up to each of us to apply what we’ve learned and try to get better.”

Added Gargett in an email to The Herald Friday: “Is Whatcom County prepared for an eruption of Mount Baker? This week, 573 participants representing 67 different agencies and organizations, not only from Whatcom County, but also from British Columbia, Colombia and Ecuador, including federal, tribal, state, local and volunteers demonstrated that Whatcom County, indeed our region, is as prepared as any community can be should we be faced with an eruption of our mountain.”

This story was originally published October 20, 2018 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Mount Baker doesn’t erupt very often, but it has the ability to have a big impact’."