Posted on: Wednesday, April 2, 2003

Nature's power on display on Big Island

By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Neighbor Island Editor

Fingers of slow-moving lava have consumed about 80 yards of the Chain of Craters Road in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park since the start of the week, sending toxic black smoke into the air and spreading the acrid odor of burning asphalt.

"It really stimulates the gag reflex," said Park Ranger Mardie Lane.

Still, the sight of lava creeping over the man-made road is delighting visitors, more so than watching it progress across old flows, she said.

"It puts you in your place. No matter what we do, nature rules in the end," she said.

The latest development in the Pu'u 'O'o-Kapa'ianaha eruption of Kilauea, now in its 20th year, is providing lava-watchers with easy access to the action. "The lava burning the road has really become an equal opportunity experience because it is so much more easily accessible. People don't have to hike across undulating lava surfaces. They just have to walk to the end of the road," Lane said.

Visitor traffic has picked up in the past couple of weeks because of spring break, and Lane said that on a busy day the national park averages 2,300 visitors. Normally, the park receives about 1,500.

Either way, it's nowhere near the 4,000 daily visitors the park was averaging last summer after a new vent opened in May, sending fluorescent-orange flows down the hillside and into the ocean.

In February when lava crossed the Chain of Craters Road, park workers were forced to move huts, toilets, signs and other equipment and establish a new center for visitors farther away from the flow.

Aside from the danger of hot lava and volcanic gases, park staff report there have been a number of methane-gas explosions at the lava front. When vegetation burns without oxygen as it is covered by lava, methane gas is created. The gas fills underground lava tubes and when the methane ignites, the ground explodes up to 100 yards in front of the advancing flow. The explosion can spray rocks and debris in all directions.