Hissss, rummmmble, rooooaaar! Nearly 1,700 residents evacuated their homes after Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano erupted yesterday. The blast sent lava oozing among trees and bubbling into streets. It’s the latest blast from Puu Oo—one of Kilauea’s volcanic cones that’s been erupting non-stop since 1983.
Hawaii’s governor activated the National Guard to help. Guard members are providing security to about 770 structures left empty when residents sought shelter. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Footage showed lava spurting into the sky from a crack in a road. Aerial footage revealed a line of lava snaking through a forest. 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,” Osuna says.
Hawaiian officials had been warning residents all week that they should be prepared to evacuate. Officials at the U.S. Geological Survey raised the volcano’s alert level to warning status, the highest possible. That means a hazardous eruption is imminent, underway, or suspected.
This most recent eruption came after days of earthquakes rattled Hawaii’s Puna district. A nearby school was closed due to the ongoing seismic activity. Several roadways cracked under the strain of the constant temblors.
The Puu Oo cone is one of the world’s longest-running volcanic eruptions. Its 1983 eruption spewed lava over 1,500 feet high. In the decades since, the lava flow has buried dozens of square miles of land, destroyed many homes, and completely closed the island’s coastal highway.
Seismologists (volcano scientists) will be monitoring Puu Oo for when—and if—residents may return to their homes.
(AP Photo: Lava burns near the town of Pahoa on Hawaii’s Big Island.)
