Man’s leg shattered by flying lava from Hawaii volcano
A MAN injured by flying lava as he sat on his third-floor balcony has become the first casualty of the eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.
The unnamed man is in a serious condition after his leg was smashed by volcanic debris – which can hit temperatures of 1,832F (1,000C) at the point of eruption – in the town of Pahoa on Saturday.
“It hit him on the shin and shattered everything there down on his leg,” said Janet Snyder, a spokesperson for the office of the mayor, County of Hawaii. She added that lava spatters “can weigh as much as a refrigerator”.
The incident came as lava streams threatened to cut off evacuation routes, and authorities warned a noxious plume could cover the island as lava began to reach the sea. “Laze” – clouds of hydrochloric acid and steam laced with fine glass particles – forms when hot lava hits seawater. Molten rock has been observed flowing in the Pacific Ocean in recent days.
“Even the wispy edges of it can cause skin and eye irritation and breathing difficulties,” a spokesman for the US Geological Survey warned.
Almost 50 properties have been des-stroyed by flowing lava since Kilauea began to erupt on May 3. A handful of people were trapped when a flow severed a road on Friday. Some had to be airlifted to safety. Wil Okabe, of the Hawaii’s mayor’s office, said of the evacuees: “They shouldn’t be in that area.”
Kilauea has created nearly two dozen lava-shooting fissures on Hawaii’s Big Island since the eruption began.
Experts are unsure of where more of the cracks might open up. “We have no way of knowing whether this is really the beginning or toward the end of this eruption,” said Tom Shea, a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii.