Hawaii officials hopeful tourists will still visit
PAHOA, HAWAII— Warnings that Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano could shoot boulders and ash out of its summit crater are prompting people to rethink their plans to visit the Big Island.
But most of the island is free of volcanic hazards and local tourism officials hope travellers will recognize it’s ready to welcome them.
Rachel Smigelski-Theiss is among those who have shifted gears. She had intended to visit Kilauea’s summit with her husband and 5-year-old daughter. Now they’ve cancelled their trip. Smigelski-Theiss says she’s worried potential flight disruptions would strand them on the island.
Hawaii officials have had a busy month pleading with travellers to keep their plans even as they’re bombarded with images of natural disasters. Last month it was floods on Kauai. Now it is lava from Kilauea volcano on the Big Island.
The national park around Kilauea was off-limits to visitors Friday for fear the volcano will blow its top in the coming days and hurl ash and boulders the size of refrigerators miles into the air.
“If it goes up, it will come down,” said Charles Mandeville, volcano hazards coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey. “You don’t want to be underneath anything that weighs 10 tons when it’s coming out at 120 m.p.h. (193 km/h).”
An explosive eruption could also ground planes at one of Big Island’s two major airports and release steam and toxic sulphurous fumes.
The volcano has been sputtering lava for a week, forcing about 2,000 people to evacuate, destroying two dozen homes and threatening a geothermal plant. Scientists are now warning of the possibility of a violent eruption caused by trapped steam.
The volcano park closed indefinitely Thursday night because of the risks.
“We know the volcano is capable of doing this,” Mandeville said, citing similar explosions at Kilauea in 1925, 1790 and four other times over the last few thousand years. “We know it is a distinct possibility.”
The danger zone from such a blast could extend about 5 kilometres from the summit, land that all falls within the national park, Mandeville said. No one lives in the immediate area of the summit.