Completed building the road over the lava

[MyManao]

My ramblings below are inspired by this article..

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/..._the_lava/

And I am posting this not so much as to focus on what is happening in the article, but to strike a sharp contrast with what happens here. 

Here the authorities are hampered by existing norms that have them not touch something without becoming inherently liable for having done so, including all the unintended consequences that might follow, along with the added layer of our local culture's sensitivities.

In Iceland a series of eruptions began a few years ago that has many parallels to our volcanoes. As is available here a lot of the scientific community's monitoring is online so it's easy to follow the eruptions and the magmatic changes happening between each, if one is so inclined. And besides they put up a lot of webcams that are online 24/7, so if that kind of thing is attractive one can become quite engaged. Arm chairing it from affair..

When the eruption began the first three events were in a remote area and besides the science and being able to view the eruptions through a multitude of webcams they were left to being awe inspiring. More recently the events have been much closer to developed property, and right in the backyard of one of their geothermal plants. Some may have heard of the Blue Lagoon. It's ponds that people pay to swim in made of the brine, the water that is left over as part of a geothermal plant's operations. It's the same as we, here, get rid of by reinject it back where it came from. It's the same water that polluted and killed a river in New Zealand before they figured out how to safely dispose it. But in Iceland, besides all sorts of other things they do with it, it's a tourist attraction.

A few days ago another phase of the eruption happened. Right now each event creates, as we're used to here, a high volume fissure eruption. But there, the last few only lasted about 24hrs each. And the last one, which happened on Feb 8, crossed a main highway and broke the main part of that side of the island's plumbing system. The plumbing carries some of that same left over hot water from the geothermal plant and distributes it throughout every building as a source of heat, and there is a second supple for water that is cleaned and similarly distributed throughout the region. And when the lava crossed the road it also covered and broke the main pipes coming from the plant.

That all sounds like just another day in Puna, right? Well, check this out. That happened on the 8th, today is the 11th, three days, and the headline in the local rag right now is; Completed building the road over the lava. As in, they've already put back their infrastructure. Which I find to be such a striking contrast to the way things happen here I thought I'd share it.

From the link above..

The work on the construction of a utility pipe by the Njarðvík pipeline was successful and safe last night. Road construction over the lava field has been completed and about half of the steel pipes that make up the pipeline have been welded together.

About 50 people worked on the project last night and today, new people are taking over.

This is stated in an announcement on HS Orka’s website. It states that all the connection equipment has been constructed successfully and that a part of it has already been installed at the northern end of the lava field.


So yeah, cut to the chase and get on with it already. What a striking difference to how we do things here.

[kalianna]

Interesting. And depressing. One of the initial excuses for not rebuilding the road here was that the lava was still too hot-- for months. Why would that not be an issue there?

[leilanidude]

Well, here we need to do an extensive EIS before touching that 40 foot plus deep new lava because there might be ancestral something or other inside it. Common sense is not a common trait, in Hawaii.

[Deckman]

I agree "Common sense is not a common trait, in Hawaii". I retired from a DOT in a northeast state and once the president signed a disaster declaration it was "balls to the wall" to repair all damages. I've seen roads and bridges washed out by hurricanes repaired in months, not years. One elderly couple was given a rental house while the DOT moved their 1800 farm house a mile down the road because the river washed out the road in front of it and we had to move the road where the old house was. That took only 6 months to do. We need some laws passed to expediate disaster relief for out infrastructures in this State.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

It’s details about the road and the hot water pipe from the article are different to understand.
From photos it looks like the new road is a heavy layer of rock and gravel over a finger of the flow.
The hot water pipe was described as bypassing the lava flow, so perhaps it was routed around either the old pipe or the lava flow itself?

Without a photo with a wider view it’s hard to know exactly how large the Iceland flow was, but it appears it’s the tail end, right before the eruption ended.  Which would make it somewhat different from the wider, deeper flows in Puna back in 2018.

[randomq]

6 years in and the county is still sitting on millions, making meaningless gestures towards those affected in Puna...

It's intentional.

[Darnok]

6 years in and the county is still sitting on millions, making meaningless gestures towards those affected in Puna...

It's intentional.

People of Hawaii wake up and vote them out……

[TomK]

Not defending Hawaii here, but there is a difference between Iceland and Hawaii. Iceland is an island but also a country, Hawaii Island is a county in Hawaii. The Icelandic government will have more of an interest in getting things fixed than a county administration that doesn't give a sh*t.

[MyManao]

Without a photo with a wider view..

Below is a map of the area, with the latest event in the lighter more muted purple, that should give you a sense of the scale of the thing.. and yes, you are right, it's just that finger that runs to the left, west..



I don't know if you've been following these eruptions.. the one before the most recent had multiple vents and one was on the edge of a town and the flow from it covered a few homes. But the main thrust from that specific eruption was at fissures a few miles out of town, and in the weeks before the eruption the government had already built a massive berm that actually took the bulk of the lava and diverted it away from the town..

Here's a picture of the beginning of that eruption with the berm being breached by the fissure itself but the bulk of the lava being erupted going to the left in the photo along the berm itself instead of flowing down into the town..



And even more striking when compared to our experiences here.. since this eruptive series began a few months ago fissures have opened up through that town. You know, like they did through Leilani. But in Iceland the government evacuated, and arranged for housing, for the entire town. Right away, no what about blah blah blah, the people's welfare, and their ability to remain whole, and cared for, was without question from day one. And instead of going on about it they went to work..

More recently the government of Iceland has offered to buy out the entire town, and create alternatives for the people who are involved. All in a few months, from scratch, without any more than a few meetings.