HONOLULU -- Nearly 1,500 residents were ordered to evacuate after Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano erupted. The eruption sent molten lava to chew its way through forest land and bubble up on paved streets. Volcano officials said they couldn't predict how long the eruption might last.
That prompted Gov. David Ige to declare a state of emergency in affected areas, activate the National Guard to help with evacuations and provide security to about 770 structures left empty when residents sought shelter.
There were no immediate reports of injuries but at least 100 people were in shelters Friday with many more evacuees believed to be staying with relatives and friends.
Hawaii County officials said steam and lava poured out of a crack in Leilani Estates, which is near the town of Pahoa on the Big Island. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Footage shown on local television showed lava spurting into the sky from a crack in a road. Aerial drone footage showed a line of lava snaking through a forest.
CBS Honolulu affiliate KGMB-TV reported lava was shooting some 100 feet in the air and nearing several homes.
Fire officials detected extremely high levels of dangerous sulfur dioxide in the air, the stations said.
Resident Jeremiah Osuna captured drone footage of the lava burning through the trees, a scene he described as a "curtain of fire."
"It sounded like if you were to put a bunch of rocks into a dryer and turn it on as high as you could. You could just smell sulfur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff," he told Honolulu television station KHON.
UPDATE: The lava is flowing onto streets in the subdivision, which consists of about 770 structures. The lava flow has prompted the mandatory evacuation of about 1,700 residents of Leilani Estates.Residents are being sheltered at Pāhoa Community Center & Kea‘au Community Center. — Governor David Ige (@GovHawaii) May 4, 2018
I just got off the phone with FEMA and they are mobilizing resources for the Hawai`i Island lava event. They are monitoring for forest fires, power outages, and water supply disruption. — Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) May 4, 2018
The U.S. Geological Survey said new ground cracks were reported Thursday afternoon. Hot vapor emerged from a crack and spattering lava began to erupt.
Scientists said areas downslope of the erupting vent were at risk of being covered by lava. Leilani Estates appeared to be at greatest risk, but scientists said new vents and outbreaks could occur and it's not possible to say where.
This is real-time video from Jeremiah Osuna of Leilani Estates on the Big Island. Mandatory Evacuation of Leilani Estates. Shelters at Pahoa Community Center and Keeau Community Center. Please be safe. pic.twitter.com/ECEbNgaj6d — Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) May 4, 2018
Ige also urged Big Island residents to "stay calm" and continue to stay tuned to emergency alerts.
Those residents are fleeing with few belongings — just what they could grab in the minutes they had to leave.
One told KGMB he grabbed his father's ashes as he ran out the door. "My family is safe, the rest of the stuff can be replaced," another resident said. "When I bought here 14 years, I knew that this day would eventually come. But the reality is sinking in now."
Another said he could also see "fountains" of lava in the community topping 100 to 125 feet
Asta Miklius, a geophysicist with the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that there is no way to know exactly how long the eruption will continue.
Kevan Kamibayashi / AP
"One of the parameters is going to be whether the summit magma reservoir starts to drain in response to this event, and that has not happened yet," Miklius said. "There is quite a bit of magma in the system. It won't be just an hours-long eruption probably, but how long it will last will depend on whether the summit magma reservoir gets involved. And so we are watching that very, very closely."
County, state and federal officials had been warning residents all week that they should be prepared to evacuate, as an eruption would give little warning. Officials at the U.S. Geological Survey on Thursday raised the volcano's alert level to warning status, the highest possible, meaning a hazardous eruption is imminent, underway or suspected.
Nearby community centers have opened for shelter.
Ranson Yoneda, the recreation director for a Pahoa community center, was readying the gymnasium for evacuees after it was selected as a Red Cross evacuation center.
He said the people who arrived first were hungry for information.
"They just want to know what's going on because they were told it's a mandatory evacuation," he said by telephone.
The eruption comes after days of earthquakes rattled the area's Puna district. A nearby school was closed due to the ongoing seismic activity and several roadways cracked under the strain of the constant temblors. A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was recorded hours before the eruption began Thursday.
The Puu Oo crater floor began to collapse Monday, triggering a series of earthquakes and pushing the lava into new underground chambers.
The collapse caused magma to push more than 10 miles downslope toward the populated southeast coastline of the island.
USGS geologist Janet Babb said the magma crossed under Highway 130, which leads to a popular volcano access point, on Tuesday night.
Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency closed the area to visitors on Tuesday and ordered private tour companies to stop taking people into the region.
Most of Kilauea's activity has been nonexplosive, but a 1924 eruption spewed ash and 10-ton rocks into the sky, leaving one man dead.
Puu Oo's 1983 eruption resulted in lava fountains soaring over 1,500 feet high. In the decades since, the lava flow has buried dozens of square miles of land and destroyed many homes.
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Volcanic eruptions that forced evacuations on the island of Hawaii brought a new threat on Friday: High levels of sulfur dioxide gasses that can be dangerous for children and older adults.
Debris began spattering from the Kilauea volcano around 5 p.m. on Thursday Hawaii time. Photos and drone footage showed cracks opening across green yards and roadways and molten rock bursting out. White, hot vapor and blue fumes began to rise.
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Hawaii County ordered the mandatory evacuation of the Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens subdivisions at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, and continued to on Friday. Officials opened two community centers to shelter people who fled their homes. No deaths or injuries were reported.
One resident, Ikaika Marzo, told The Honolulu Star-Advertiser that lava fountains were shooting 150 feet into the air about 5:30 p.m. and that lava had spread over a 200-yard-wide area behind a house in Leilani Estates.
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“It sounds like a jet engine. It’s going hard,” he told the newspaper.
Leilani Estates had a population of 1,560 in the 2010 census, but residents say the evacuations could affect thousands of people.
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“People are scared,” said Matthew Purvis, a pastor who runs a bakery in the town of Pahoa.
“It’s not just evacuating people, it’s their things and their animals and their livelihoods,” he added.
(CNN) A volcanic eruption has spewed molten rock and hazardous gas from the ground in a small community on Hawaii's Big Island, sending people fleeing from their homes as trees burn and the threat of more destruction is feared.
Cracks in Kilauea volcano's rift zone -- an area of fissures miles away from the summit -- erupted Thursday and early Friday, spurting lava in Leilani Estates, a community of about 1,700 people near the Big Island's eastern edge.
Video posted on social media Thursday showed magma spewing several feet into the air from a new crack in a Leilani Estates street. Aerial videos showed lava searing a long orange and smoky line through a wooded area.
Jeremiah Osuna, who used a drone to record one of the videos, said the area "sounded like if you were to put a bunch of rocks into a dryer and turn it on as high as you could," according to CNN affiliate KHON
"You could just smell sulfur and burning trees and underbrush and stuff," Osuna said, according to the TV station. "I couldn't believe it. I was kind of shaken a little bit and realizing how real everything is, and how dangerous living on the East Rift can be."
Authorities ordered residents of Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens to evacuate to two community centers, which are serving as shelters.
Smoke and lava are widespread Thursday following the eruption of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano.
Eruptions from cracks in the Leilani Estates area continued into Friday morning, the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency said.
Leilani Estates resident Meija Stenback told CNN affiliate KITV that she left the area with her family. The eruption came after hundreds of earthquakes shook the eastern side of the Big Island over four days, and residents had been warned an eruption was possible.
"We knew it was coming, and even now it's ... really surreal at this point," Stenback told KITV.
A thick plume of smoke and ash also rose Thursday from the Puu Oo volcanic vent, roughly halfway between Kilauea's caldera and Leilani Estates.
A plume of ash rises from the Puu Oo volcanic vent Thursday in this US Geological Survey photo.
Concerns about sulfur dioxide
Destructive molten flows weren't the only concern. Volcanic eruptions can release potentially dangerous sulfur dioxide -- and fire department personnel have detected high levels of the gas in the evacuation area, the civil defense agency said.
Exposure to high levels of sulfur dioxide could be life-threatening, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Breathing large amounts of sulfur dioxide could result in burning of the nose and throat and breathing difficulties, the agency says.
Senior citizens, the young and people with respiratory issues have extra incentive to leave the evacuation zone, because they are especially vulnerable to the gas, the state's Emergency Management Agency said.
Leilani Estates-area resident Stephen Clapper said he heeded the evacuation order in large part because his 88-year-old mother was out of her portable oxygen supply, KHON reported.
"I ran in, grabbed the dogs, put them in a crate, put them in the car, went in my room, just grabbed an armload of clothes," he said, according to KHON.
Gov. David Ige said he's activated the Hawaii National Guard to help with evacuations and security.
"I urge residents in Leilani Estates and the surrounding areas to follow instructions. ... Please be alert and prepare now to keep your family safe," he tweeted.
Kilauea is one of the world's most active volcanoes. It's in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park , which has since closed off nearly 15,700 acres due to "the possibility of a new eruption and unstable geologic activity." But most of the park remains open, it said in a statement.
Check out this photo of the #lava on Mohala Street in Leiliani Estates that was taken by our crew earlier today. Please be safe everyone! https://t.co/wMo5BzSMAh @NWSHonolulu pic.twitter.com/cPUuGXGMp8 — HawaiiElectricLight (@HIElectricLight) May 4, 2018
Since Monday, hundreds of earthquakes -- most of them around 2.0 magnitude -- have been recorded in the area. The series of quakes came after a collapse of a crater floor of Puu Oo.
Since that collapse, about 250 earthquakes were reported in the area into Tuesday evening, according to a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory status report.
Earthquakes migrate east of Pu'u 'Ō'ō, signaling an intrusion of magma along the middle and lower East Rift Zone. Orange dashed line marks the approximate area within which most of the earthquakes are located. https://t.co/vJRUw2HRvh pic.twitter.com/nhMbMH20yW — USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) May 3, 2018
The tremors have jarred residents, who've been reporting nearly constant ground vibrations. They have also reported cracks in roads.
The US Geological Survey said the magnitude of the most severe quake ahead of the eruption was 5.0.
"It has now become unnerving," resident Carol Shepard told KHON.
She said the flurry of earthquakes seemed to happen every minute.
"It'd be like the house would shake. It'd be like somebody that weighs 300 pounds came in my living room, and jumped up and down," she said.
Lava spurts through cracks in roads and flows in residential areas on Big Island
A whole town has been ordered to evacuate after the eruption of the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island caused lava to flow in residential areas.
All 1,500 inhabitants of Pahoa were told to leave after steam and lava poured out of a crack in the nearby Leilani Estates. Lava spurted into the sky from the road and aerial drone footage showed a line of lava snaking through a forest.
Resident Ikaika Marzo told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that lava spread over an area of about 180 metres wide behind one house in Leilani Estates on Thursday. He said it sounded like a jet engine.
Residents had been warned for the last week that they should prepare to evacuate, with officials saying an eruption would give little warning. Nearby community centres were providing shelter.
Earlier in the week, a school in the Puna district was closed due to the ongoing seismic activity and several roads cracked under the strain.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An ash plume rises above the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. Up to 10,000 people have been asked to leave their homes following the eruption. Photograph: Kevan Kamibayashi/AFP/Getty Images
Since Monday, hundreds of earthquakes – most of them about 2.0 magnitude – have been recorded in the area. The Puu Oo, which is a volcanic cone in the eastern rift zone of the Kīlauea volcano, began to collapse on Monday, triggering earthquakes and pushing the lava into newly created underground chambers.
Officials said it was impossible to predict how long the eruption would last.
Jeremiah Osuna, who captured drone footage of the lava stream, told the Honolulu television station KOHN that it sounded as if someone “put a bunch of rocks into a dryer”. He said he could smell the sulphur, along with the burning trees and other vegetation.
The US Geological Survey said fresh cracks in the ground were reported on Thursday afternoon and hot vapour and lava began to erupt.
The geologist Janet Babb said the magma crossed below Highway 130, which leads to a popular volcano access point, on Tuesday night. Hawaii County civil defence agency closed the area to visitors and ordered private tour companies to stop taking people into the region.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lava spurts from the ground as emergency vehicles attend the scene. Photograph: Video screegrab/Maija Stenbeck/via Reuters
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It is located in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which has closed off nearly 6,350 hectares (15,700 acres) due to “the possibility of a new eruption and unstable geologic activity”.
Most of Kilauea’s activity has been non-explosive, but an eruption in 1924 spewed ash and nine tonnes of rocks into the sky, leaving one man dead.
Puu Oo’s 1983 eruption resulted in lava fountains soaring over 460 metres (1,500ft) high. In the decades since, the lava flow has buried large areas of land and destroyed many homes.
