Hawaii officials will make arrangements for those living in the path of a lava flow to watch the destruction of their homes.
That accommodation is being made to “provide for a means of closure,” Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira said Monday. “You can only imagine the frustration as well as … despair they’re going through.”
Dozens of residents have been told they might have to evacuate as lava from Kilauea heads toward their homes. The lava was about 100 yards from a home Monday morning, officials said.
After weeks of fitful advancement, the lava crossed Apaa Street on Sunday in Pahoa Village, considered a main town of the Big Island’s isolated and rural Puna district. It was getting dangerously close to Pahoa Village Road, which goes straight through downtown.
Officials closed the Pahoa Village Road between Apaa Street and Post Office Road to everyone except residents. Those living downslope of the flow are under an evacuation advisory. Most residents have left or have made arrangements to go somewhere else if necessary. Oliveira said he doesn’t anticipate having to issue a mandatory evacuation order.
The couple living in the house closest to the flow have left but have been returning periodically to gather belongings, Oliveira said. “They are out of the property and awaiting the events to unfold.”
He estimated the lava could reach the house sometime Monday evening. Apaa Street resident Imelda Raras, said she and her husband are ready to go to a friend’s home if officials tell them they should leave.
“We are still praying,” she said. “I hope our home will be spared.”
Scientists began warning the public about the lava on Aug. 22. At the time, residents were cleaning up from a tropical storm that made landfall over the Puna district, toppling trees and knocking out electricity. Since then, residents, geologists and civil defense officials have been watching and waiting, trying to figure out what path the lava would take. Saturday, the 150-yard-wide flow began washing over Pahoa cemetery — leaving blackened tombstones standing starkly over the new rock landscape.
The lava has advanced and slowed as residents waited and watched. Kilauea volcano, one of the world’s most active, has been erupting continuously since 1983. This is not an eruption at the caldera, the things that make for stunning pictures as red lava spews from the mountaintop. Decomposition of vegetation in the lava’s path has created methane gas, which if it accumulates and is ignited by heat can cause a blast, Babb said.
“It’s not a massive explosion,” she said. “But it can dislodge rocks. It can hurl large rocks several feet.”
How are residents coping?
Hawaii civil defense workers were going door to door in and around the town on the Big Island on Monday, urging residents in the immediate path of the lava to evacuate. They said about 95 percent of the people they’d reached had some place else to go, while the rest were heading for a Red Cross shelter.
The lava flow was only about 70 yards from the closest occupied home Monday night, and it was moving about 20 yards per hour, Hawaii County emergency management officials said. The couple who live in that home have already packed up and left, they said.
Alii Hauanio’s family lost their beach home in the 1990-91 Kilauea lava flow that destroyed the town of Kalapana. Now, his home in Pahoa is similarly threatened.
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