Eruption Update

Things keep oozing along here. Fissure 8 hasn't slowed down. An incredible amount of lava gets pumped out each minute, maintaining the large lava river snaking through Puna. More houses have been destroyed, somewhere around 700 total to date. In addition, lots of outbuildings and businesses have bit the dust too. 

Fissure 8, a close up view from a heliocopter ....

Below, a view of the lava river.....

All the brown vegetation is not due to drought. That's right. It's once lush tropical greenery killed by the volcanic gasses. Needless to say. Nobody is living in those houses near the lava flow. 

No one can say how long this eruption will last. Weeks more. Perhaps months. Maybe even years. But until it stops, thousands of people's lives are disrupted. But that's the risk one takes when living in a lava zone on an active volcano.

Meanwhile up at Kilauea summit, the stored lava is apparently still draining out of Kilauea. Thus the summit keeps caving in on itself, resulting in hundreds of small earthquakes every day plus a few larger ones. The ground around the summit is cracking and slumping in. The highway there is experiencing damage ...... cracks, slumps, and recently a significant sinkhole at a location that had a previously slumped and been patched. 

Turns out that the hole was humongous under the 5 foot diameter hole in the asphalt. I captured these photos off of a friend's Facebook page........

The width and length of the underlying hole was the size of a pickup truck. I happened to drive by Volcano today and saw that there were several new repair jobs, several cracks, and many new slumps that I hadn't seen on my last drive by. If this weren't the only road connecting Ka'u to Puna, I suspect that the authorities would close it. There is a high risk of more damage occurring and sinkholes opening up. 

People here live with volcanoes all the time. They deal with the inconveniences. And have to accept the possible damage. People who can't accept that simply move away....to places where they have to deal with other types of problems : tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, heavy wind, lightning, blizzards, civil unrest, pollution, etc. Personally, I'd rather live with this volcano than be someplace else. To each their own choice.