Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions

An anonymous reader writes Officials say molten lava from a Hawaii volcano has been flowing steadily in an area where residents have been warned they might have to evacuate their homes. Dozens of residents in the flow path have been told to complete all necessary preparations by Tuesday for a possible evacuation. From the article: "Janet Babb, a geologist and spokeswoman for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said methane explosions also have been going off. She said decomposing vegetation produces methane gas that can travel subsurface beyond the lava front in different directions, accumulating in pockets that can ignite. She said it was a bit unnerving to hear all the blasts on Saturday."

Comments

still a better god than JHV1

[Thud457]

Pele's doing just fine, thankyouvermuch.
Her neighbors are currently having a bit of a hard time, though.

Re:Molten lava?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lava refers to either molten rock...or....molten rock that has flowed, cooled and solidified. "Lava beds" are large areas of once-molten rock that are solidified.

Re:OOOOooo "dozens warned they MAY need to flee"

[MikeMo]

You'd care if it was in your neighborhood and your insurance company won't cover your house.

Re:OOOOooo "dozens warned they MAY need to flee"

[cellocgw]

SRSLY? You bought a house in [redacted] Hawaii and didn't get volcano insurance?

Pictures?

[jopsen]

How can we have a story about lava without pictures? I'm not sure how this is supposed to scare me :)

Re:Pictures?

[Cardoor]

it's ISIS lava!!

Fixed.

needs rebranding

[slashmydots]

All the Hawaii PR department has to do is rebrand now. "Come see a real, genuine flaming hellscape. Don't settle for those fake Hollywood post-apocalyptic disaster landscapes. Come see the real thing!"

Re:needs rebranding

[machineghost]

No rebranding needed. The Big Island has never exactly been the key to Hawaii's tourism industry (most of the island, especially on the volcano side, doesn't even have sandy beaches.) Plus, just about everything tourist-y on that island already is lava-themed anyway. They've got a lava forest, lava tubes, steam vents powered by underground lava, the giant volcano itself ... heck they even had a highway that got overrun with lava and instead of fixing it they turned that in to a tourist attraction!

Re:needs rebranding

[Rei]

Meh.

If you want a flaming hellscape, Kilauea is a little candle compared to Bárðarbunga in Iceland. Kilauea erupts a couple cubic meters per second. Bárðarbunga erupts a couple hundred. Kilauea's gas emissions barely show up on satellite images. Bárðarbunga's just last night caused levels so high in a town a hundred kilometers away that it went off the top of the safety scale (which they got from Hawaii ;) ). Bárðarbunga has already erupted more lava than of Mauna Loa's multi-year eruptions in modern history, in under two months, and is up to about 1/6th the volume emitted by Kilauea in the entire 31 years of its eruption, with no signs of stopping. And it's doing all of this through a dike dozens of kilometers long. The magma chamber itself may still actually go off, mind you. An area the size of Manhattan is currently dropping by about a foot per day into the caldera, and has been doing so for months, causing one in every five powerful earthquakes on Earth. The caldera has released the largest lava eruptions on Earth since the last Ice Age, as well as floods several times larger than all of Earth's major rivers combined.

But nobody cares about Icelandic volcanoes unless they take out European air travel ;)

Comparatively speaking, lava moves slowly.

[radwarrior]

If I lived in an area susceptible to volcanic activity, I'd have a plan in place to bug out in the event of an event. Compared to most natural disasters lava moves slowly and for the most part, scientists are able to accurately predict eruption risk ahead of time. I wouldn't wait until told to leave.

I live in an area with a wildfire risk, and in fact last summer this area lost over 500 homes to the, "Black Forest Fire". My place was evacuated but didn't suffer any loss. Wildfires move quite a bit faster than a lava flow.

Pictures?

[pat_trick]

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/multimedia/index.php?newSearch=true&display=custom&volcano=1&resultsPerPage=20

I'm surprised the original post links to a news story from a Seattle newspaper instead of the actual USGS website.

Re:OOOOooo "dozens warned they MAY need to flee"

[machineghost]

I care and I don't even have an uninsured house ... though to be fair my uncle and aunt do :-( Pahoa is so remote you can't even get cellphone coverage there, but it's a beautiful area (it's on the island's rainy side so everything is lush and green). Houses cost in the 100-200k range, and while that is pretty cheap it still sucks to see it all melt away.

Re:OOOOooo "dozens warned they MAY need to flee"

[JoeMerchant]

Pahoa is Native town... these people don't have the kind of money that most Hawaii immigrants do, nor the financial ability to move elsewhere on their island.

Methane increase?

[Rinikusu]

What are they feeding the volcano?

"We said VIRGINS, not VEGANS."

My wife was out there the other night

[XenoBrain]

My wife was out there Saturday night as a county volunteer with a pass to go into the restricted area. Her group walked right up to the flow on Ala'lli next to the transfer station (she's got some amazing videos on her phone, I'll ask her to upload them to Youtube later).

She was the first to smell a sudden burst of methane, mentioning it the leader of the group, he shouted "we need to get out of here, now!" An explosion followed mere seconds after they has cleared.

I cannot tell you how shaken I was to hear that story when she got home.