Hmmmm....

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A surge of water, possibly from a melting glacier, washed rocks and trees down the side of Mount Rainier and onto roads and raised the level of the Nisqually River.

No injuries or serious damage were reported Tuesday night and there was no flooding downstream. However, some campers left several areas at the base of the 14,411-foot volcano, spokeswoman Laura VanderMeer said at a state emergency operations center at Camp Murray.

Mount Rainier National Park rangers and geologists planned to fly over the area Wednesday to investigate.

The rush of water may have been a ``glacial outburst,'' scientists said.

``It's a hot summer, a dry year,'' said Bill Steele of the University of Washington seismology center in Seattle. ``The water builds up, gets trapped under the glacier and then can burst forth suddenly, causing a flood down the channel which can be quite dangerous if you're near the river.''

There were no reports of seismic activity on the volcano.

Pierce County has ringed the volcano with sensors to warn authorities of a possible eruption, flood or mud flow. One of those devices sounded an alarm Tuesday at the county dispatch center, Sheriff Paul Pastor said.

Mount Rainier National Park authorities did not consider it an emergency, spokeswoman Maria Gillett said Wednesday.

However, she and several of her neighbors in Ashland, near the park's southern entrance, took survival supplies and left their homes.

``I grabbed my pack, grabbed a cell phone and a park radio, and went and grabbed an elderly neighbor who I wasn't sure would know what was going on,'' Gillett said.

Computer simulations have shown that an eruption of Rainier could kill as many as 5,000 people, many of them in mud flows that would be created as volcanic heat rapidly melted ice and snow on the mountain. The deadly 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, some 50 miles to the south, sent devastating floods and mud flows down the Toutle River.