© US Geological Survey/ReutersA new fissure spraying lava fountains as high as about 230 feet (70 m), according to United States Geological Survey, is shown from Luana Street in Leilani Estates subdivision on Kilauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone in Hawaii, U.S., May 5, 2018.
Emergency authorities battling lava flows and gas erupting from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano told some residents to "Go now" as a new fissure opened and more structures were destroyed.
Kilauea has destroyed 26 homes and forced 1,700 people to leave their residences since it erupted on Thursday, spewing lava and toxic gas from volcanic vents in a small area of Hawaii's Big Island.
A new fissure opened on Sunday night in the Leilani Estates area some 12 miles from the volcano, prompting a cellphone alert for residents to leave homes to avoid sulfur dioxide gas, which can be life threatening at high levels.
So far no fatalities or major injuries have been reported from the volcano, according to the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency.
Evacuees from Leilani Estates were allowed to return for pets, medications and to check property on Sunday, but some like Jeremy Wilson found homes surrounded by fissures that can be hundreds of feet long.
© Marco Garcia/Associated PressResidents from the lava affected areas hold a prayer before a community meeting with local authorities at Pahoa High School.
The semi-rural wooded area of Leilani Estates had become a magnet for newcomers to Hawaii's Big Island who were prepared to risk living near to an active volcano in return for more affordable real-estate prices.
Eruptions of lava and gas were expected to continue, along with aftershocks from Friday's 6.9 magnitude earthquake, the largest in the area since 1975, according to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. A lava flow advanced 0.6 of a mile from one of the vents.
Geologists said the activity looked like an event in 1955 when eruptions continued for 88 days in the area and covered around 4,000 acres with lava.
© U.S. Geological Survey/Associated PressA stream of lava burning within the Leilani Estates subdivision, near the town of Pahoa on Hawaii's Big Island.
"There's no way to know that if you're sitting in your living room in Ohio and watching the national news," she said.
Gauthier predicted business would pick up as a new kind of visitor began to appear.
"Within a month we'll start getting lava tourists," she said of people who come to Hawaii to see its active volcanoes.
Hawaii County authorities requested lava watchers keep away.
"This is not the time for sightseeing. You can help tremendously by staying out of the area," the civil defense agency said in a statement.
Via Reuters
Reader Comments
All of the AGW-following 'Monkey'* idiots should see it - not that it would change their predispositions to trust what they are told to think, rather than do it themselves.
But what logical person, who even has a minor clue about physics, the size of Earth, nature, the absolutely puniness of mankind (supposedly the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the wheel: The Modern, MSM Programmed Man, a nonthinking machine which has tricked itself into believing it is thinking, when it only 'thinks it is thinking)'; again, I ask how could anyone buy into the AGW crap when they look at those merely visible Gases from this one site?**
R,C,
*Because they sang "I'm a Believer'.
** Not to mention the invisible emmissions, nor the invisible gases the video is taken through; nor the underwater vents, when oceans cover ~70% of the Earth's surface, and all the gases go up an so does the heat (themodynamics). Etc. etc.
RC