‘I just wanted to live’: Hawaii lava bomb survivor
The sheer force of the lava bomb was what Darryl Clinton remembered feeling first, more powerful than any waves he had ever encountered in the ocean surrounding Hawaii.
It knocked him backward on the third-floor lanai of his neighbour’s home on the eastern end of the Big Island, where most people had evacuated amid three weeks of heightened volcanic activity on Kilauea. Clinton and some others had stayed behind, maintaining a vigil to protect the neighbourhood from a fissure that had opened up several hundred metres away.
For five days, they had taken turns hosing down area homes whenever molten rocks — flung from Fissure 17 — landed on them. For five days, Clinton had successfully avoided the projectiles.
On Friday, though, a piece of molten rock struck Clinton in the ankle as he was on the phone. The power of it pushed him off his feet and onto a couch that was promptly lit aflame.
“It was the most forceful impact I’ve ever had on my body in my life,” Clinton told a crowd of reporters from his hospital bed Tuesday. “That was just incredibly powerful and hot. It burned.”
When Clinton next looked down — as a nearby friend scrambled to wrap a tourniquet around his leg — all he saw was bone protruding as blood spurted forth.
All he felt was searing, excruciating pain. “I don’t know if I was in shock,” Clinton said. “I just think about my daughters and knew I was up on that roof, and I was in really bad shape . ... I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t pass out.”
Clinton became the first known person injured by Kilauea since its volcanic activity dramatically increased more than three weeks ago. Officials announced the incident with few details, identifying Clinton only as a homeowner on Noni Farms Road who had shattered his leg from his shin to his foot when lava spatter struck him.
Living on the slopes of one of the world’s most active volcanoes meant it was hardly their first brush with lava, Clinton would later say.
The lava flows themselves were usually slow enough to be avoided, he said. It was the projectiles from the lava fountains they had to watch for, and they had learned to judge their arc as they sailed through the air.
“It’s almost like catching a football,” Clinton told CNN, who interviewed him on Friday, before he was hit by a lava bomb. “But you don’t want to catch this football.”
Hours later, he would be in the back of a truck, on his way to meet medics in agonizing pain. He was rushed to Hilo Medical Center, where he said physicians cleaned out his wound, removed tissue they could not save and, to his surprise, stabilized the leg he felt almost certain he would lose.
“I just wanted to live. I didn’t care if they cut my leg off or not,” Clinton said Tuesday, according to KHON. “I just can’t believe it’s there.”
Thousands of Big Island residents who were living near the lava flows have already evacuated the area to escape the lava flows and noxious sulphur dioxide gases rising from the vents.
Recently, scientists have captured rare images of blue flames burning from cracks in the pavement, offering insight into a new dimension in the volcano’s weeks-long eruption.
Volcanoes produce methane when hot lava buries and burns plants and trees. The gas flows through the ground and up through existing cracks.
“It’s very dramatic. It’s very eerie,” said Jim Kauahikaua, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist, who noted it was only the second time he’s ever seen blue flames during an eruption.