Has anyone been keeping track of the lava flow?

[kalakoa]

I want to call them and see if they want any help.

http://www.hawaiicountycdp.info/puna-cdp

[kimo wires]

Puna in the National News:

AP National News report on Kilauea.
http://news.yahoo.com/hawaii-volcano-lav...12729.html

One Thing I can always be sure of is that things will never go as expected.

[csgray]

I have a 3D topographic map of the Big Island in my classroom, today we got it out and tried to figure out which way things would flow. While it does not have every bump and wrinkle of the actual island it is pretty accurate. It looks like the lava is flowing on one side of a broad ridge, with a very shallow slope that runs to the ocean through Pahoa and Hawaiian Beaches/Shores. Past Highway 130 the slope really flattens out and the lava could spend years pooling here and there before it gets to the ocean, depending on lava tube formation of course.

Carol
Not my circus, not my monkeys.

[Guest]

When I first moved here, all my friends joked about "watch out for the lava", which I shrugged off.

I hope this all goes away without anyone being injured or losing their homes.

[jerry]

Its possible to do a lot of paper and pencil (or I guess now it would be I-pad and I-phone) planning without using any actual resources. Is Civil Defense doing this?

For example, to open a road through the National Park would take a lot of heavy equipment--where would it come from?
It would take a lot of gravel--from where, trucked how?
How long would it take? Could it be worked on 24/7 from several locations? How soon before 130 is blocked would you need to start to avoid a month or so of no access?

Regarding the road from Kapoho to HPP, couldn't the state or feds declare some sort of emergency and widen/grade/improve it without jumping though a million bureaucratic hoops? This road could be improved much faster than access though the Park and would buy time while that road is completed.

I am all for property rights, but there is a limit.

Jerry

[Rob Tucker]

Such planning requires leadership. All the employees generally wait to be told what to do.

[bananahead]

of note... some are saying lava has flowed in the Hawaiian Beaches and Nanawale Forest Reserve area in the past....
That lava flow was 174 years ago..... and was a completely different animal than anything we have seen from little tiny Pu'u O'o...... In its short 26 day life, that 1840 flow was said to put out over 2 times more lava in its 26 days than Pu'u O'o can in 1 year! And this only counts the lava left on land and not any of the masses that entered the ocean, so the amount of lava was actually well more... It made it all the way from a spot in HVNP where Mauna Ulu is now (well West of where Pu'u O'o is now) to the Ocean near Hawaiian Beaches ('Sand Hills') in only 5 days, and eventually extended out the shoreline by 1,300' and made 'Sand Hills'.
Capt Clarence Edward Dutton spends some time in his book 'Hawaiian Volcanoes' describing in journal like detail his walking tour from Puna to Hilo (page151), and describes every lava flow he encountered, including this 1840 flow that made up 'Sand Hills' near WaaWaa (cinder cone-like hills of lapilli made when the hot lava hit the ocean) as being well under 1 mile wide at coast but up to 3 miles wide more inland.


snippet from a very interesting article about the 1840 flow that created 'Sand Hills' near WaaWaa and made it to ocean in 5 days

"The 1840 eruption on Kilauea's east rift zone was one of the most notable of the past 200 years. People reported a spectacle so awesome that "one could read newsprint at night in Hilo (18 miles away) by its light!" The eruption created the picturesque Sand Hills near Honolulu Landing....The eruption was the largest on the lower east rift zone in the past 2,000 years."
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/arch...08_28.html

PS. including the active flow right now, not a single lava flow east of Kaimu is from the very young Pu'u O'o..... including 'Sandhills' in WaaWaa (1840, described above), Kapoho/Cape Kumukahi (1955, 1960), Seaview (1955), Kehena Beach (1955), etc.

These 50+ year old flows were all from the East Rift Zone (a rift across lower Puna)... even the a'a flow that crossed hwy 130 between Pahoa and Black Sands Subdivision was not from Pu'u O'o, it looks to originate from a spot near Iilewa Crater (about 1.5 miles directly north of Black Sand Subdivision) and is also the same flow that some of Seaview is built on and also the same flow that hit ocean (1955) and eventually made Kehena Beach

******************************************************************
save our indigenous and endemic Hawaiian Plants... learn about them, grow them, and plant them on your property, ....instead of all that invasive non-native garbage I see in most yards... aloha

[opihikao]

Great information, bananahead, and all. Historically, this is quite interesting. As we watch this event, what do you all think about diversion? I'm wondering if this is part of the current discussion. JMO.

(*Snipped - More at link)

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/arch...11_28.html


The 1935 lavas can be easily identified as the black flow surrounding Pu`u Huluhulu on the Saddle Road opposite the Mauna Kea access road. This eruption also marks the first attempt at altering the course of a Hawaiian eruption, through the use of explosives.

Eventually the lava turned to follow the natural drainage toward Hilo, instigating a crisis. On December 26, the flow was moving 1.6 km per day (1 mile per day), and at that rate scientists calculated the flows would reach Kaumana Road by January 9 (disrupting mochi-pounding parties). A suggestion to bomb the eruption was made. The U.S. Army Officer who planned the bombing operation was then Lt. Colonel George S. Patton, who would go on to WWII fame.

On December 27, U.S. Army planes dropped bombs, targeting the lava channels and tubes just below the vents at 2,600 m (8,600 ft). The object was to divert the flow near its source. The results of the bombing was declared a success by Thomas A. Jaggar, Director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Jagger wrote that "the violent release of lava, of gas and of hydrostatic pressures at the source robbed the lower flow of its substance, and of its heat." The lava stopped flowing on January 2, 1936. The efficacy of this lava bombing is disputed by some volcanologists, and lava diversion will be the subject of a future Volcano Watch.


More information here:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02600367


Meeting in Pahoa begins at 6:30pm. Please update us if you attend. Mahalo in advance.

[punafish]

Thank you for that info bananahead, very interesting.

[csgray]

I'm not taking a position on the effectiveness of bombing one face of Pu'u O'o to send the lava in another direction, but if that cone is within National Park boundaries I think hell would freeze over before that level of interference with a natural feature within the park would ever happen. In addition there is the question of liability if people's property in the newly created lava path was destroyed. Bombing Pu'u O'o could release a lot of lava all at once, which might make it hard to predict where it would go. If Kaimu got wiped out as a result, for example, there would be some real liability and ethics questions about people choosing who the winners and losers were going to be. Who decides who suffers from the eruption?

Carol
Not my circus, not my monkeys.