Lava flow resumes at Kilauea vent
Volcano stirring
Activity at Big Island's Kilauea is heightening as the eruption of the island's youngest volcano entered a new phase. Read our stories, see more photos, and see video.
Advertiser Staff
Kilauea has started up again and lava is flowing from the Thanksgiving Eve Breakout vent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
After a pause for several days without any lava activity on the surface of Kilauea, scientists yesterday reported a small surface flow moving northward and lava was once again reoccupying the tube system. However, no lava was flowing into the ocean.
The paused flow indicated that the eruption, which began Jan. 3, 1983, and over the last several months delivered spectacular lava flow into the ocean at Waikupanaha, had shut down.
Pu'u 'O'o was the center of activity from 1992 to 2007. On Nov. 21, 2007, lava drained from Pu'u 'O'o and surfaced from a new vent more than one mile east, and all lava activity since then had been produced at that site, called the TEB vent, for Thanksgiving Eve Breakout.
Lava from the TEB vent, just inside the eastern border of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, has flowed down the mountain, through the beleaguered Royal Gardens subdivision and eventually into the ocean at numerous places along the shoreline.
Recently, a vigorous lava flow through a tube from the TEB vent to the ocean had been drawing hundreds of onlookers each day via a road built by Hawai'i County to afford a safe lookout in lower Puna.
On March 12, a new gas vent opened in the south wall of Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea's summit, and sulfur dioxide has been spewing from that hole-in-the-wall site since then, occasionally mixed with ash and volcanic glass.
