The Road Washed Out

I live in Bellevue, Washington, and I ski. Most of the time I drive to Stevens Pass on Route 2. Sometimes I take Route 410 to the mountain.

That road is more remote. It runs through Greenwater, follows the White River, and ends near Mount Rainier. When 410 closes, the people who live and work along it lose more than a convenient route. Restaurants lose customers. Gear shops lose business. A weekend disappears.

Last winter, storms washed out sections of the road. One section east of Enumclaw closed in December. It partially reopened later with one lane and alternating traffic. There were delays, closures, and the usual question before leaving home: is the road still open?

Then the mountain started making noise.

In July 2025, Mount Rainier had its largest recorded earthquake swarm. More than 700 events were located, with hundreds more too small to locate. The USGS and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network described the activity as structural: the mountain settling, not magma moving toward the surface.

That is reassuring, in a technical sense. It is less reassuring when you are driving past the mountain every weekend.

The scientists kept saying some version of, "We have no reason to be worried." They were probably right. That sentence still does not make the decision go away. At what point does a seismic swarm justify closing 410? When do you issue a warning? When do you move people out of the river valleys? Waiting too long has a cost. Closing too early has a cost too.

That is where the game started.

I wanted to make a game about the decisions around a volcanic event: roads, evacuation zones, shelters, public communication, and the cost of acting before the evidence is conclusive. But the more I worked on it, the less the game was about an eruption.

The mountain is only one pressure on the corridor. The others are fire, flooding, snow, avalanches, traffic, and the ordinary failures that become dangerous when several arrive at once.

The game is about managing that corridor with limited resources and incomplete information. The road is already damaged. The fire is already burning. The budget is already spent. Then a new signal appears.

Disaster Draw is at disasterdraw.com.