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Bud Backer follows path to fire chief
What’s Inside Sports.................................Page 4 Views...................................Page 6 Pets......................................Page 8 Obituaries.........................Page 9 Classified...........................Page 20
By Ray Still
This Week...
Richland where he grew up, whom Backer looked up to as a second father figure. He didn’t know it at the time, “I didn’t realize he was maybe but Bud Backer was being led planting seeds, and after I got down the yellow brick path of a out of college and I moved into fire fighter long before he West Richland, a started volunteering with friend of mine that I the Duvall fire departwent to high school ment in 1988. with, who was also Now, Backer will be East mentored by him, Pierce Fire and Rescue’s he called and said, fire chief after signing his ‘Hey, do you want to contract May 19. be a volunteer fireBud Backer “I’m very excited to fighter?’” come on board,” Backer It wasn’t long, said. “It’s just as exciting as my Backer said, before he caught first day on the job.” the bug. Backer’s first official day at “It doesn’t take much,” East Pierce is June 15. he said. “You go out and be Although his career started involved in a couple incidents much later, Backer was influenced by a battalion chief in SEE BACKER, PAGE 3 Reporter
• The Walk for Water event in Enumclaw will be raising money to build water wells in Africa at 1:30 p.m. May 31 at 43801 244th Ave SE. • The East Pierce Fire and Rescue Scout Night will
host all Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Campfire members from 6 to 7 p.m. May 29 at the fire station in Bonney Lake. • Learn guitar at the Enumclaw Library with award-winning singer and songwriter Wes Weddell at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 30.
Weather The forecast for Wednesday calls for mostly cloudy skies with highs near 70. At night, expect lows to drop near 51 with clouds. Thursday calls for more clouds and a high near 70, which will drop to a low of 51 at night, still with clouds. Friday will see some sun with a high near 73.
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6 months old, enjoys spending time with his family Growing into his Kolman, and helping them out in their plot at the Bonney Lake Community Green Thumb Garden, which is still accepting applications for plots. Photo by Ray Still
Mount Rainier, avatar of beauty and destruction By Ray Still
I
t only took seconds to bring about one of Washington’s largest ecological disaster and the world’s largest recorded landslide. On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens’ summit washed out in an enormous landslide, causing a large explosion that threw volcanic rock, ash and gas into the air. Magma poured out of the volcano’s depths and was soon joined by avalanches of hot ash, pumice and volcanic gas, forming a pyroclastic flow that spread at speeds up to 80 miles per hour down the mountain. More dangerous still were the lahars, melted glacier water mixed with mud and rocks. The largest lahar traveled down from the
volcano into the Cowlitz River, reaching its largest size 50 miles downstream from where it started, bringing indiscriminate destruction to everything in its path. An estimated 520 million tons of ash choked the sky, bringing darkness to towns and cities more than 250 miles away from the volcano.
Mount Rainier and other Cascade volcanoes
“Each of the Cascade volcanoes have a little different personality,” said Carolyn Driedger, hydrologist and outreach coordinator with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). “Mount St. Helens is one of the most explosive volcanoes in the Cascade range.” In short, Mount St. Helens has
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the ability to blast magma apart into billions of tiny pieces and make a big ash plume, Driedger said. Mount St. Helens’ ash plume covered 22,000 square miles of terrain in the U.S., and parts of the plume traveled around the world in just three days, according to the USGS. “The other volcanoes are not as explosive. Mount Rainier is one of those volcanoes,” Driedger said. “It has less explosions of volcanic ash into the atmosphere and slightly more fluid, gas-rich magma, which means it flows out of the volcano as a lava flow as opposed to being blasted into the atmosphere.” Less explosions and ash sound like a blessing, but Mount Rainier
Although the eruption happened 35 years ago last week, Mount St. Helens remains high on the United States Geological Survey’s potential threat list. However, eyes have turned to Pierce and South King County’s beautiful backdrop, Mount Rainier, which has taken its place as Washington’s, and even the nation’s, most dangerous volcano.
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SEE RAINIER, PAGE 7
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