A Hawaiian man whose leg was struck and shattered by lava spatter is opening up about the ordeal.
Darryl Clinton, a native of California, was witnessing the volcano eruption from the roof of a home he was helping evacuate when lava spatter hit his leg and crushed it from his shin to his foot, according to a GoFundMe created for him.
Clinton, who is the father of two teenage daughters, told KHON it was “the most forceful impact I’ve ever had on my body in my life.”
“I’ve been hit by big waves and various things. That was just incredibly powerful and hot. It burned,” he said.
A friend of Clinton’s was able to wrap his leg in a sheet and take him down five flights of stairs to get help, according to the outlet.
Clinton admits he’s not sure if he was in shock or not but did say he was simply thinking “about my daughters, and I knew I was up on that roof and I was in really bad shape.”
“My leg was in half, my bone was sticking out,” he told KHON. “There was blood squirting out.”
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Doctors at the Hilo Medical Center were able to save Clinton’s leg, and he’s been ordered to stay off of it for six weeks, the outlet reported.
Despite his massive injury, Clinton said the eruption “was incredible.”
“It was an event of a lifetime. Every aspect of the lava was there,” he said. “The sounds, the sites, the flowing lava, the fissures. It was all happening at one time.”
And while he greatly admired the moment, he did admit, “I’m good on the lava.”
A spokesperson for the Hawaii County Mayor’s Office told Reuters on Saturday that lava spatter “can weigh as much as a refrigerator and even small pieces of spatter can kill.”
It has been more than two weeks since the volcano’s initial burst sent lava shooting up from the ground — and residents running from their Leilani Estates homes on Hawaii’s Big Island.
Over 2,000 Hawaii residents have been ordered to evacuate as the island has seen numerous fissures, CBS News reported. Earlier this month, a large crack opened near the ocean, swallowing the lava into the ground, according to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
