Hawaii’s famed Kilauea volcano erupts, spewing lava and forcing evacuations

are on the ground, and we are monitoring the situation 24/7,” Stovall said. “How the eruption proceeds from this point is yet to be seen.”

Kilauea, the youngest volcano on Hawaii Island and one of the world’s most active, sits on the southeastern flank of the iconic Mauna Loa.

In contrast to volcanoes in California and the Pacific Northwest, Kilauea has a gentle slope, and reaches a height of only 4,091 feet. Mt. St. Helens in Washington state rises 8,330 feet high, while California’s Mount Shasta has an elevation of 14,163 feet.

The last time Kilauea opened fissures in a residential area was 1960.

That eruption, just outside the town of Kapoho, started with a fissure that was much larger than the ones in Leilani Estates this week, Stovall said. It grew as long as 3,000 feet. The lava fountains were much higher too – up to 330 feet. When the crack began to seal up, the geyser that resulted was even taller.

Efforts to divert the lava away from homes failed. Kapoho managed to survive for two weeks after the first eruption, but its fortunes changed when less viscous lava spilled out.

“They tried to do things to stop the lava – they built dams, they built barriers,” Stovall said. “That didn’t do anything to stop the lava... You can’t really stop a volcano from erupting. If there’s magma coming into the system continually, it’s just going to push everything out of its way. The eruption will stop when the eruption stops.”

In the end, Kapoho was destroyed.

The eruption that began in 1983 has been destructive at times, and began similarly to Thursday’s, with cracks in the ground that unleashed a fountain of lava, followed by the fissure zipping up until there was just a small opening and a geyser of lava as high as 835 feet.