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Tag: Daniel Inouye

  • Hawaii road in limbo as Mauna Loa lava continues to crawl

    Hawaii road in limbo as Mauna Loa lava continues to crawl

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    HONOLULU — About a week-and-a-half since the world’s largest volcano began erupting, Hawaii officials continue to brace for slow-moving lava to intersect with a crucial Big Island road, even though scientists are not sure when or even if that will happen.

    On Wednesday morning, lava from Mauna Loa, which began erupting Nov. 27 after being quiet for 38 years, was 1.8 miles (2.89 kilometers) from Saddle Road, also known as Route 200 or Daniel K. Inouye Highway, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey said. The road connects the east and west sides of the vast island.

    Last week, officials said the earliest the lava could hit the road was one week. But, as expected, the lava slowed considerably in recent days as it moved across flatter ground, leaving scientists unable to estimate a clearer timeline.

    “I wish we could give a better answer,” David Phillips, deputy scientist-in-charge at USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said Wednesday. “And so just based on its current behavior and all the variables involved, it’s very difficult to estimate a time, a place or even an if, it would intersect the highway.”

    The flow front seemed even less active Wednesday than the previous day, possibly because of a breakout of lava headed upslope that could be diverting lava from what’s headed to the highway, Phillips said.

    Scientists were monitoring the overflow about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) upslope from the lava front but it wasn’t currently posing any threat, Phillips said. It was unclear if it would continue to be active, but if does, it would be a while before it reached the road, he said.

    Hawaii County Mayor Mitch Roth said planning for a road closure continues. Residents of the island are bracing for major upheaval if lava makes the road impassable, forcing drivers to find alternate coastal routes, which could add hours to commute times.

    Roth warned that the road could even close before the lava arrives if some lava-gawkers continue behaving badly, including people hiking onto closed areas to get a closer glimpse.

    Thousands of motorists driving along the road to watch the lava prompted officials to open a one-way “mitigation route” last week.

    The route seems to have helped reduce collisions that were happening at night when lava-viewing traffic increased, officials said.

    “As we’re looking at this lava flow, you know, the concern hasn’t been so much for people getting hurt by lava,” Roth said Tuesday, “it’s people getting seriously injured by traffic crashes.”

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  • Prayers? Bombs? Hawaii history shows stopping lava not easy

    Prayers? Bombs? Hawaii history shows stopping lava not easy

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    HONOLULU — Prayer. Bombs. Walls. Over the decades, people have tried all of them to stanch the flow of lava from Hawaii’s volcanoes as it lumbered toward roads, homes and infrastructure.

    Now Mauna Loa — the world’s largest active volcano — is erupting again, and lava is slowly approaching a major thoroughfare connecting the Big Island’s east and west sides. And once more, people are asking if anything can be done to stop or divert the flow.

    “It comes up every time there’s an eruption and there’s lava heading towards habited areas or highways. Some people say ‘Build a wall’ or ‘Board up’ and other people say, ‘No don’t!,’” said Scott Rowland, a geologist at the University of Hawaii.

    Humans have rarely had much success stopping lava and, despite the world’s technological advances, doing so is still difficult and dependent on the force of the flow and the terrain. But many in Hawaii also question the wisdom of interfering with nature and Pele, the Hawaiian deity of volcanoes and fire.

    Attempts to divert lava have a long history in Hawaii.

    In 1881, the governor of Hawaii Island declared a day of prayer to stop lava from Mauna Loa as it headed for Hilo. The lava kept coming.

    According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Princess Regent Lili’uokalani and her department heads went to Hilo and considered ways to save the town. They developed plans to build barriers to divert the flow and place dynamite along a lava tube to drain the molten rock supply.

    Princess Ruth Ke’elikōlani approached the flow, offered brandy and red scarves and chanted, asking Pele to stop the flow and go home. The flow stopped before the barriers were built.

    More than 50 years later, Thomas A. Jaggar, the founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, asked U.S. Army Air Services to send planes to bomb a Mauna Loa vent to disrupt lava channels.

    Lt. Col. George S. Patton (who later became famous as a general in Europe during World War II) directed planes to drop 20 600-pound (272-kilogram) demolition bombs, according to a National Park Service account of the campaign. The bombs each had 355 pounds (161 kilograms) of TNT. The planes also dropped 20 smaller bombs that only had black powder charge.

    Jagger said the bombing helped to “hasten the end of the flow,” but Howard Stearns, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist onboard the last bombing run, was doubtful. In his 1983 autobiography, he wrote: “I am sure it was a coincidence.”

    According to the park service, geologists today also are doubtful the bombing stopped the lava flow, which didn’t end with the bombing. Instead, the flows waned over the next few days and didn’t change paths.

    Rowland said authorities could use a bulldozer to pile a big berm of broken rock in front of Daniel K. Inouye Highway. If the terrain is flat, then lava would pile up behind the wall. But the lava may flow over it, like it did when something similar was attempted in Kapoho town in 1960.

    Rapidly moving lava flows, like those from Kilauea volcano in 2018, would be more difficult to stop, he said.

    “It would have been really hard to hard to build the walls fast enough for them. And they were heading towards groups of homes. And so you would perhaps be sacrificing some homes for others, which would just be a legal mess,” he said.

    He said he believes most people in Hawaii wouldn’t want to build a wall to protect the highway because it would “mess with Pele.”

    If lava crosses the highway, Rowland said officials could rebuild that section of the road like they did in 2018 when different routes were covered.

    Hawaii County’s director of civil defense, Talmadge Magno, said Wednesday the county has no current plans to try to divert the flow, though he has had some discussions about it.

    Hawaii Gov. David Ige, who was governor during the 2018 Kilauea eruption, told reporters his experience showed him it’s not possible to overcome nature and Pele.

    Thinking you should physically divert lava is a Western idea rooted in the notion that humans have to control everything, said Kealoha Pisciotta, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner. She said people need to adjust to the lava, not the other way around.

    “We are not separate from nature,” she said. “We are a part of nature.”

    ———

    Associated Press writers Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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