Lava limits escape paths; mass evacuation mulled
Lava, cracks in earth make roads impassable
Hawaii residents threatened by the Kilauea volcano are finding fewer escape options. With magma increasingly blocking roads, officials are considering a mass evacuation using military helicopters.
“They’re going to have to drag me out of here.” Mark Wyatt Resident and property manager in Seaview Estates
KEAAU, Hawaii – As the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island spews lava and toxic gas, weary residents are facing the threat of fewer routes to escape — and the possibility of finding themselves stranded.
Three rural highways serve as evacuation routes for roughly 5,000 residents living near the erupting lava fissures. One is completely blocked, and another remains open only to local residents — for now.
The biggest concern is the third exit route: Highway 130, a main connector road that runs from north to south through the region.
Several large cracks have formed in the road from magma disrupting earth as it travels downslope underground. Nine metal plates have been installed over the cracks to maintain access.
But if those fail and the highway becomes impassable, residents in many neighborhoods will be stranded.
“We’re doing everything humanly possible to keep Highway 130 open,” said Don Smith, an engineering program manager for the Hawaii Department of Transportation.
To keep the road passable, transportation officials will reinforce the metal plates, fill in the cracks with aggregate material and use heat-resistant steel reinforced plates if needed.
“We have multiple contingencies in place, and we’ll go down the list depending on the circumstances,” said Tim Sakahara, public information officer for the Hawaii Department of Transportation.
One backup plan includes shoring up a road that runs through the closed Volcanoes National Park for use as a one-way emergency evacuation route.
But that also presents several challenges. While only a small portion of Chain of Craters Road has to be fixed, the route passes close to the Halema’uma’u crater, near the volcano’s summit, which sporadically continues
to spew ash thousands of feet into the air.
Despite the uncertainty, Jean Howell, a Seaview Estates resident who lives a few miles downwind from where the lava is entering the ocean, is staying put.
“My knowing is that I am right here, right now, because this is where I am supposed to be,” Howell said. “If I was supposed be somewhere else, I’d be guided by a higher knowing within me to go somewhere else.”
If authorities order an evacuation for her area, Howell said, she hasn’t decided whether she would leave. “There really aren’t a whole lot of places to go,” she said.
Fellow Seaview resident Mark Wyatt is in a similar boat. He retired to the Big Island 12 years ago and manages three rental properties in the coastal neighborhood.
While his tenants and about 60% of the neighborhood have evacuated, Wyatt is staying as long as possible to watch over the homes.
“Even if they do mandatory evacuations, they’re going to have to drag me out of here,” he said. “I’m going to have to see the lava before I decide to leave. I don’t know where else I would go because I love it here.”
Prince Keli’iho’omalu’s family has lived in Kalapana for nearly a century. As a member of a road maintenance crew with the Hawaii County Department of Public Works, Keli’iho’omalu relocated out of Kalapana for his job. He said many of his relatives in Kalapana plan to stay.
“Their view is that they’re not going to move unless they really have to,”he said. “The majority of them are retired and” grow their own vegetables and raise pigs and chickens.
“They know they can survive off the land; that’s why they feel comfortable staying,” Keli’iho’omalu said. “Part of it’s cultural, and part of it is they have nowhere else to go.”
He said his younger relatives who have jobs requiring daily travel on Highway 130 will soon face tough choices: “They’re going to have to make a decision (to stay or evacuate) sooner or later.”
Depending on which way the lava travels and where new fissures erupt, the only way out may be by helicopter.
Officials say they are formulating plans to conduct mass air evacuations should the region’s main roads be compromised.