Lava swallows up entire Hawaii neighborhood

HONOLULU — A neighborhood called Vacationland on Hawaii’s Big Island had disappeared by Wednesday as lava poured into two oceanfront subdivisions, smothering hundreds of homes and filling an ocean bay, turning it into new land jutting into the sea.

Molten rock entirely covered Vacationland and only a few buildings remained in the nearby Kapoho subdivision, officials with the U.S. Geological Survey said.

“The bay is completely filled in and the shoreline is at least 0.8 miles out from its original location,” said Geological Survey geologist Wendy Stovall. “Vacationland is gone, there is no evidence of any properties there at all. On the northern end of that, there are just a few homes in the beach lots area.”

Resident Mark Johnson is hopeful that his home on a citrus farm is one of those still standing. His ocean-view property sits on a ridge near the base of Kapoho crater, and he thinks the lava could have missed it.

“Basically we are up on that hill, so we’re still OK right now,” Johnson said.

But he has resigned himself to the possibility that he could lose his beloved farm, which he can’t access even if lava doesn’t cover it. The property isn’t far from a crater lake that the approaching flow vaporized days before entering his neighborhood.

“I’m kind of at peace, actually,” Johnson said of potentially losing his home of 28 years. “I feel that I’ve had a really great experience.”

County officials said the two subdivisions have 279 homes, and most are feared destroyed from the most recent lava flows in the low-lying area.

“Over the course of essentially two days, that entire area was covered by lava,” Stovall said.

Molten rock from the erupting Kilauea volcano already has destroyed at least 117 homes in the Lanipuna Gardens and Leilani Estates neighborhoods where lava surfaced more than a month ago. The total number of homes destroyed in the eruption stands at about 400.

Scientists are still recording vigorous volcanic activity. While only one crack in the ground is spewing molten rock and the height of fountaining lava has decreased in recent days, “it’s still really impossible to tell,” when it will end, Stovall said.

The lava inundation is among the most destructive and costly in volcano property loss in U.S. history. While no one has been killed and only one lavarelated injury has been reported, the number of destroyed homes dwarfs other recent American eruptions.