Hawaii's Kilauea volcano could spew fridge-sized boulders, experts warn
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If Hawaii's Kilauea volcano blows its top in the coming days or weeks, as experts fear, it could hurl ash and boulders the size of refrigerators kilometres into the air, scientists said.
Key points:
- Similar eruptions in the past have seen boulders shoot out from the volcano
- Authorities are also removing flammable liquid from a geothermal plant
- An explosion at the plant could have a blast radius of 1.6 kilometres
An explosive eruption could close down airline traffic and endanger lives in all direction.
"If it goes up, it will come down," said Charles Mandeville, volcano hazards coordinator for the US Geological Survey.
"You don't want to be underneath anything that weighs 10 tons when it's coming out at 120 mph."
The volcano, which has been spitting and sputtering lava for a week, has destroyed more than two dozen homes and is now threatening a geothermal plant full of flammable liquid.
The warning came as authorities scrambled to remove around 190,000 litres of highly flammable liquid from a geothermal plant after a new fissure opened up 800 metres away from the site.
Hawaii Governor David Ige said if the pentane stored at the Puna Geothermal Venture plant ignites, the resulting explosion could create a blast radius of up to 1.6 kilometres.
The plant sits at the edge of the Leilani Estates residential area on Hawaii's Big Island where lava from 15 volcanic fissures has so far destroyed 36 structures, most of them homes, and forced the evacuation of about 2,000 residents.
A new area just to the west of the residential area was evacuated on Wednesday after toxic clouds of sulfur dioxide started shooting up through cracks in a road, County of Hawaii Civil Defence reported.
"As more fissures open and toxic gas exposure increases, the potential of a larger scale evacuation increases," Governor Ige said in a tweet on Wednesday evening.
'Explosive' eruption has happened before
Previous explosive eruptions at the Kilauea volcano in 1925, 1790 and four times in the last few thousand years have got scientists concerned, according to Mr Mandeville from the US Geological Survey.
He said the problem is that the lava lake at the summit of Kilauea is draining fast — at about two metres per hour — and spewing out of cracks elsewhere in the mountain.
In little more than a week, the top of the lava lake has gone from spilling over the crater to almost 295 metres below the surface as of Thursday morning.
"This is a huge change. This is three football fields going down," Mandeville said.
The fear is that it will go below the underground water table, another 305 metres further down, and trigger a chain of events that could lead to a "very violent" steam explosion.
"We know the volcano is capable of doing this ... We know it is a distinct possibility," Mr Mandeville said.
A similar 1924 explosion threw pulverised rock, ash and steam as high as 9 kilometres into the sky for a couple of weeks.
At the current rate of change, that is about six or seven days away.
Mr Mandeville would not estimate the likelihood of such an explosion, but said the volcano's internal plumbing could still prevent an explosion.
No one lives in the immediate area of the summit crater as the crater and surrounding region are a part of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which planned to close on Friday.
AP/Reuters
Topics: volcanic-eruption, disasters-and-accidents, united-states
