A rising tide of lava turned a Hawaii street into a smoking volcanic wasteland on Friday, destroying at least eight homes as residents stood on the road and watched their houses burn.
Some 15,000 acres of land have been burned down by lava since May 3, which would be the most destructive eruption of Kilauea in over a century, according to the County of Hawaii.
“There were eight houses taken on this road in 12 hours,” said Ikaika Marzo in a Facebook video as he stood on Kaupuli street and showed a black, glass-like lava field where his cousin’s house previously stood.
“It’s this tide of lava that rises up and overflows itself on the edges and keeps rising and progressing forward,” said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Wendy Stovall told journalists on a conference call.
Around 37 structures are “lava locked,” meaning homes are inaccessible, and people who do not evacuate them may be hemmed in by 30-foot-high (9-meter-high) walls of lava.
Magma is draining underground from a sinking lava lake at Kilauea’s 4,091-foot (1,247-meter) summit before flowing around 25 miles (40 km) east and bursting from giant cracks, with two flows reaching the ocean just over three miles (4.83 km) distant.
Stovall declined to comment on lava volume being emitted. Marzo said he was told by a USGS geologist there was much more to come from Kilauea.
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“What has been coming out is just a small fraction of what was in the volcano,” he said he was told.
Though lava destruction from the volcano is confined to a roughly 10-square-mile (26-sq-km) area, the eruption is hurting the island’s tourist-driven economy as potential visitors fear ashfall or volcanic smog belching from Kilauea’s summit.
A 4.4 magnitude earthquake at the volcano’s summit on Friday prompted County of Hawaii Civil Defense to reassure the island’s 200,000 residents that there was no risk of a tsunami.
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