One of the most active volcanoes on Earth is currently gushing lava on Hawaii’s Big Island along with others.
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Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey confirmed Wednesday that an eruption has begun in Kilauea volcano’s Halemaumau crater at the volcano’s summit.
Webcam footage of the crater showed lava fountains covering the floor of the crater and billowing clouds of volcanic gas were rising into the air. The same area has been home to a large lava lake at various times throughout the volcano’s eruptive past.
The eruption is not in an area with homes and is entirely contained within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
All signs indicate that it will stay within the crater,“ said Ken Hon, the USGS scientist in charge of Hawaii Volcano Observatory. “We’re not seeing any indications that lava is moving into the lower part of the east rift zone where people live. Currently all the activity is within the park.”
The volcano’s alert level has been raised to “warning” and the aviation code changed to red.
Earlier Wednesday, officials said increased earthquake activity and ground swelling had been detected, and at that time raised the alert levels accordingly.
Kilauea had a major eruption in 2018 that destroyed more than 700 homes and displaced thousands of residents. Before that eruption, the volcano had been slowly erupting for decades, but mostly not in densely populated residential areas.
Before the major 2018 eruption, Kilauea had been erupting since 1983 and streams of lava occasionally covered rural farms and homes. During that time, the lava sometimes reached the ocean, causing dramatic interactions with the water.
Canary Islands volcano lava reaches sea
Lava from an erupting volcano in the Canary Islands has reached the ocean
Fear of toxic gases being released as the lava hits the sea water. (above)
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The regional government of the Spanish archipelago had already declared an exclusion zone of two nautical miles around where the lava was expected to enter the Atlantic and asked nearby residents to stay at home.
“The lava flow has reached the sea at Playa Nueva,” the Canary Islands Volcanic Institute (Involcan) said on Twitter on Tuesday night.
La Cumbre Vieja volcano, which straddles a southern ridge in La Palma, an island with 85,000 inhabitants, erupted on 19 September, spewing out rivers of lava that have slowly crept towards the sea.
Residents of several areas of Tazacorte, a village near the coast, were told on Monday to stay at home to avoid harm from the release of toxic gases that can take place due to a reaction between molten lava and water.
On Tuesday afternoon, the slow-moving lava flow, which has varied in speed over the past few days, even halting at one point, was still about 800 metres from the coast, making it impossible to predict when it would reach the ocean. Read more from Guardian
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