Thousands flee ‘curtain of fire’ as Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupts
THOUSANDS of Hawaiians were evacuated yesterday after a volcano on Big Island erupted, causing lava to spurt from the ground.
The burst from Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, followed a 5.0-magnitude earthquake and opened an almost 500ft crack in the ground. Residents described fountains of lava shooting 150ft in the air and spreading down paved streets in Leilani Estates, near the town of Pahoa.
“I looked around and asked myself, ‘What’s valuable?’” Michael Hale, one resident, told the Honolulu Star-advertiser. “I could see the plumes … In that moment, nothing looked valuable.”
Last night Big Island was hit by a series of earthquakes, the largest measuring 5.8, the US Geological Survey said. Dangerously high levels of sulphur dioxide have also been detected in the air. Around 1,700 Leilani residents were ordered to evacuate on Thursday while some 10,000 people are in voluntary evacuation zones.
Henry Calio first sensed danger when he saw cracks had emerged in the driveway of his retirement home.
Stella, his wife, then received a call from an official ordering them to evacuate immediately, leaving them fearful they might lose their home, he said.
Jeremiah Osuna, who used a drone to record one of the social media videos of the eruption, told KHON, a Honolulu TV station, his footage showed a “curtain of fire” snaking through a forest.
“You could just smell sulphur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I was kind of shaken a little bit and realising how real everything is, and how dangerous living on the East Rift can be.” David Ige, the state governor, declared a state of emergency.
Kilauea is one of five volcanoes on Big Island, with a lake of molten lava at its peak and an eastern rift erupting almost continuously since 1983.
However, explosions along its two active rifts are rare. Asta Miklius, a geophysicist from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said there was no way to know 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,” he said.
“There is quite a bit of magma in the system. It won’t be just an hours-long eruption probably … so we are watching that very, very closely.”