Hundreds of residents flee for their lives following Hawaii volcano eruption

Jane Howdle

Around 1,700 residents have been forced to flee their homes following the eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.

An emergency evacuation followed yesterday’s eruption on Big Island, which saw molten lava spread through forest land and bubble up on paved streets in Leilani Estates, near the town of Pahoa.

Hawaii’s governor activated the National Guard to help with evacuations and provide security to about 770 buildings left empty while residents sought shelter.

Red ash seen rising from the Puu Oo vent on Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano after a magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck the Big Island on Thursday (Kevan Kamibayashi/U.S. Geological Survey via AP)
Red ash seen rising from the Puu Oo vent on Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano after a magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck the Big Island on Thursday (Kevan Kamibayashi/U.S. Geological Survey via AP)

Resident Jeremiah Osuna captured drone footage of the lava burning through the trees, a scene he described as a “curtain of fire”.

“It sounded like if you were to put a bunch of rocks into a dryer and turn it on as high as you could,” he told Honolulu television station KHON. “You could just smell sulphur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff.”

Asta Miklius, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, told the Associated Press there was no way of knowing exactly how long the eruption would continue.

“One of the parameters is going to be whether the summit magma reservoir starts to drain in response to this event, and that has not happened yet.

“There is quite a bit of magma in the system. It won’t be just an hours-long eruption probably, but how long it will last will depend on whether the summit magma reservoir gets involved. And so we are watching that very, very closely.”

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County, state and federal officials had been warning residents all week that they should be prepared to evacuate, as an eruption would give little warning.

Officials at the US Geological Survey on Thursday raised the volcano’s alert level to warning status, the highest possible, meaning a hazardous eruption is imminent, under way or suspected.

The eruption came after days of earthquakes rattled the area’s Puna district.

A nearby school was closed due to the ongoing seismic activity and several roadways cracked under the strain of the constant temblors. A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was recorded hours before the eruption began on Thursday.

Road blocks in the area caused some drivers to make U-turns, after Hawaii County ordered evacuations for all of Leilani Estates, near Pahoa (KHON via AP)
Road blocks in the area caused some drivers to make U-turns, after Hawaii County ordered evacuations for all of Leilani Estates, near Pahoa (KHON via AP)

The Puu Oo crater floor began to collapse on Monday, triggering a series of earthquakes and pushing the lava into new underground chambers.

The collapse caused magma to push more than 10 miles (16km) towards the populated south-east coastline of the island.

USGS geologist Janet Babb said the magma crossed under Highway 130, which leads to a popular volcano access point, on Tuesday night.

Hawaii County Civil Defence Agency closed the area to visitors on Tuesday and ordered private tour companies to stop taking people into the region.

Most of Kilauea’s activity has been non-explosive, but a 1924 eruption spewed ash and 10-ton rocks into the sky, leaving one man dead.

Puu Oo’s 1983 eruption resulted in lava fountains soaring more than 1,500ft (457m) high. In the decades since, the lava flow has buried dozens of square miles of land and destroyed many homes.