Slashdot Mirror
Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses
jurt1235 writes "The rockface on the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii recently collapsed over the course of about four hours. The collapse was predicted. The USGS has some great pictures of nature in action. The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano." From the CNN article: "The plume, 6 feet in diameter, sent up a tower of steam as it hit the water and began forming a ramp of new land. The collapse of solidified lava shelf and sea cliff Monday was the largest since Kilauea Volcano began its current eruption in 1983."
(ducks)
You are not the customer.
The new rockface, which most likely will fall again, is already being build up by the vulcano.
This should read:
The new rock face, which most likely will fall again, is already being built up by the volcano.
Have the Slashdot editors been replaced with ESL monkeys?
Or perhaps, are there no open source apps with spelling and grammar checking?
Or perhaps, do they just not care because idiots like me will probably continue coming here out of habit, regardless of how bad the writing and editing is?
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's CLOBBERIN' TIME! ... oh THAT rock face... *ducks*
I come here for the high quality spelling and grammar corrections in the comments.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The rock face of Kilauea didn't collapse. A shelf on the coastline formed by lava flows from Kilauea collapsed. Kilauea is located fairly far inland and has no chance of collapsing without taking a decent portion of the island of Hawai'i with it.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Additionally, you can find pictures of the lava and a description of the hike to the spot that collapsed on the OutdoorDB wiki.
Laboratree - Scientific collaboration based on OpenSocial.
No, it's Spock during the Pon Farr.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Often one or two overballed tourists get too close and die. Anything like that this time? It may take a few days before anybody would realize they are missing I suppose.
Table-ized A.I.
For a (usually up to date) view of the nearby lava vent that is the source of all this try http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/cam/index.htm It is currently showing yesterday's image.
Well, as the volcano does its thing, it creates new land. Yes, it'll take some time to be useful land, but, new land it is.
... in Hawaii. That's gotta be worth something!!
New land
Who owns it?
If my 2 3/8 acre lot suddenly got bigger on on side, somehow, would I own it? My neighbor?
Would I have to pay increased taxes on my suddenly-newer lot?
Does anyone know how this all works?
"Rock Face of Kilauea Volcano Collapses" almost had me lunging for CNN in the hope of spectacular footage of Hawaii sliding into the ocean beneath mile-high plumes of steam and lava, while the USA's west coast falls into panic before the approaching tsunami.
"Biggish Lumps of Lava Miles from Kilauea Fall Into Sea" would be a more accurate description. Maybe the editors can use that for next week's dupe.
Reading the article made me curious about being killed by volcanos in general. I googled this site. Pretty interesting read, but it doesn't satisfy my "how painful would it be to jump into a lava flow" curiosity
Cooled lava flows may look stable to walk on, but the crust may be thin, which would expose the hiker to a falling into a lava tube. There may even be flowing lava under a thin crust of aa lava. Falling into an active lava tube will be instant death.
http://www.volcanolive.com/safety.html
Apparently a good part of Mauna Loa did collapse and the resulting tsunami was a few hundred meters high.
4 .htm
Bad news is that if it happened again, it would decimate Hawaii, but the good news (if you can call it that) is that this sort of tsunami would attenuate before reaching the mainland.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~earles/kohala-tsunami-sep0
Yup, the description kind of sucked, but the link was decent. Before and after photos of the collapsed lava delta from the website linked.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Interesting story about this. I recently moved to Hawaii, and some friends related to me a few months ago about their visit to Volcano National Park last January, when they were allowed to actually hike right up to the lava flowing into the ocean. They said they could come as close as 10 feet away before the radiant heat of the liquid rock became too much. And it's a beautiful sight at night, with red streaks of lava on the hillside in the distance, flowing about a half mile across the flat shelf (or bench, as geologists call it) from the base of the hill into the ocean. So of course I wanted to go see this too, b/c how often do you get to see real, molten lava, right out of the earth's mantle??? Anyone who thinks this isn't interesting to geeks should think again!
So I finally got a chance to go with some friends last Friday, day after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the park rangers had closed the trail a mile and a half from the lava flow, saying that a bench had collapsed into the ocean several months ago, taking 14 hikers with it, who were never found. I can only imagine that they either drowned, were incinerated, or were buried alive by the landslide, or some ungodly combination of the three. There are also a lot of signs at the park with pictures of a bench breaking off into the ocean and an unfortunate stick figure hiker falling in with it, but the pics are out of scale and make the bench look like a rather small edge of land by the sea, easily steered clear of.
Anyway, it was a disappointment b/c I really wanted to see the lave up close. My friends and I debated a bit about sneaking out across the lava fields anyway, which would have been quite easy to do since the ranger station was over a mile back down the road, and there were no rangers guarding the trail or anywhere near. We figured we would just stay a good 50 yards or more inland, away from these fragile "benches". We didn't care so much about seeing the lave go into the ocean as we did about just seeing it flowing across the ground.
But in the end we decided to turn back and head home, and return another day. Only yesterday did I see in the news that a ~40-acre bench had broken off into the ocean. Holy moly, 40 acres! And that was only three days after we almost snuck out on this exact bench, not realizing its massive size! I also discovered that that bench that took the 14 hikers with it was actually ~12 acres, certainly not easily steered clear of. Further, like an iceberg, the lava flowing across the surface of the bench is only a fraction of the total flow, as most of it flows down the hill, hits the bench at the base of the hill, and seeps into tunnels which spread out over a wider swath than the surface flow, and through which it continues its flow to the ocean. These hollow tunnels, combined with the porous brittleness of hardened lava rock and erosion from the ocean water seaping into the bench causes large sections to crumble and break off periodically.
It's all quite fascinating, but the moral of the story is, kids, when the park ranger at a volcano tells you not to do something but doesn't volunteer the details or say why, trust him anyway and don't do it!
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Now THAT is a money shot.
You're probably thinking of something like the La Palma Wave that scientists say could be caused by the collapse of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I thought all sarcasm was Open Source. You just keep improving and revising the phrase until it becomes bug-free:
v1. Have you ever heard of a spellchekcer?
v2. That should me "spellchecker" ^^
v3. ^^ Obviously spellchecker's can't fix everything.
v4. Neithe'r can' obssessiv'e apostrophes's ^
v4.1. That's why I use VI
v4.2. Emacs said this ^^ doesn't need to be capitalized
Wait... that's not progress. Eh, then again, neither was X.org...
[ducks]
First, Kilauea is not errupting per-say. Kilauea volcano, and the Kilauea caldera, are located within the park itself and the caldera is NOT errupting. Lava is (and has for many years now) been moving from under kilauea caldera towards the Pu'u O'o vent, about 15 or so miles away (as the Nene fly) where the lava both comes out in surface flows as well as moves through lava tubes. While Pu'u O'o does sit on, and is part of, kilauea caldera - and while one could technically say that kilauea volcano is errupting, it is a bit misleading.
Also... the 'rock face' of kilauea did NOT collapse. The rock face is just dandy and totally intact as it is only a mile from me - and has a very nice road all the way around it for people to enjoy.
What REALLY happened is that lava flowing through lava tubes from the Pu'u O'o vent, which sits at about 2500 feet above sea level, is moving down a steep pali (cliff) and out onto the flats near sea level. It continues allt he way to the ocean where it comes out of the cliff side and pours into the ocean. Over time a false chunk of land builds up - often many many acres in size. This new land is called a Lava Bench and it is extremely unstable as it is both very new, has active lava in it, and is being undercut by the ocean water. Over time (anywhere from days, to months) this bench builds to the point where it can't sustain it's own weight and other environmental factors, and at that point it breaks appart in a spectacular burst of lava and explosions and disappears into the ocean.
This has been going on for a very long time now. I personally have witnessed two lava benches collapse only yards from me (one in fact threw red hot lava up into the air, and over my head, to land behind me - needless to say we quickly retreated to a safer position).
As per the question being asked of who owns the new land... it depends on where the lava comes out. The lava tends to have about a 6 to 8 mile wide area that it likes to flow. Sometimes it is entirely on one side, placing it in the park boundries and thus under control of the feds. Other times it swings the other side and flows outside of park boundries, and away from the feds - to spots where we can have much more fun playing with lava.
And play we like to do... besides cooking in lava (die-hard slashdotters may require my question in the interview to Alton Brown on how cooking in lava works, and his flippant reply questioning the type of drugs I was on), dropping steel cable into lava tubes to pull out samples, and other more questionable practices that will go unmentioned here.
However, it was NOT the rock face of kilauea caldera (volcano) that has collapsed... it is merely the cliff side and lava bench which are extremely unstable and EXPECTED to collapse. This one made the news only because it was very very big - but not unexpected, not rare, not the caldera or volcano itself, and certainly not something which is unusual.
If you want more information about our wonderful volcano - and recipes for cooking in it, or poking things in it, or dangers of lava, or even how to walk on the hot stuff... see our portal below:
http://www.instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Volcan o
Mahalo nui loa!