The leading tip of the June 27, 2014 flow stalled just a half-mile west of Highway 130, which goes through the small town of Pahoa on the southeast corner of the Big Island. This photo was taken Jan. 24, 2015, showing the lava that oozed down the hill, flowing through fencing and onto the asphalt of the Pahoa Transfer (waste) Station, the 2,000-degree lava heated the rebar in the concrete until the hardscape exploded. It also incinerated a home and surrounded whatever used to be underneath this red roof. "Breakouts" from the main stagnant flow, however, have persisted about 500 meters upslope, as seen by the smoke plumes of burning vegetation. USGS geologists with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory report a January 13-16 breakout advanced 430 yards, becoming the new leading edge and scorching 500 acres. Work crews have begun to clear the lava from the transfer station to allow it to reopen.

 

Photo: Steve Kelly, LASN

On Saturday, Feb. 7, the leading edge of the lava flow was only 0.36 miles from Highway 130 and the Pahoa police and fire stations. Photo: USGS On traveling to the Big Island the week of Jan. 17-24, one of my aspirations was if at all possible to witness flowing lava. I'd been reading about last summer's lava flow bearing down on the little community of Pahoa on the southeastern end of the island, and was intrigued to see the little town and the effects wrought by this distant vent emanating from mighty Kilauea.

I was staying at the Kilauea Military Camp (KMC), a joint services retreat founded the same year as Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, 1916. KMC is perched at the top of the mountain a mile inside the park. Its 4,000-foot elevation keeps the night temperature a chilly 59 degrees (that's cold for this Southern Californian and most of the islanders). You see masses and patterns of stars that you never knew existed, and the pinkish glow of sulfurous steam rising dramatically above the jungle canopy from the venting Kilauea caldera, whose overlook is just a short walk away.

KMC, parenthetically, was a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. The camp's chow hall (any islander can eat there on the weekend) shows off a picture of its most illustrious guest, a unformed but relaxed Dwight Eisenhower in 1946 learning against a tree with a cigarette in hand. He was Chief of Staff of the Army then, a statutory office held by a four-star general.

I drove down the mountain, ears popping, about 40 minutes to sea level to Pahoa, what one in-depth local guidebook calls an "outlaw" town. I learned the flow had engulfed one home on Nov. 1, 2014, but the flow had stalled just a third of a mile from the two-lane road going through town. Pahoa's supermarket, Malama Market, Long's Drugs, the only pharmacy in Pahoa, along with one of three gas stations have closed, apparently conceding their properties to the goddess of volcanoes, Pele, Ka wahine ʻai honua (the earth-eating woman).

Following the smoke rising just west of town, I drove through a checkpoint manned by National Guard soldiers to the area where the lava flow had subsided and piled up, encroaching on a waste treatment facility. While the main flow has stopped, branches of it break out and burn the landscape. Unfortunately, my dream of seeing flowing lava was not to be. It would have required slipping unnoticed by National Guardspersons, wading uphill through dense foliage and following the trail of smoke to the firebreaks. Stepping in the wrong spot could mean ground collapsing and a foot sinking into molten rock"?(R)?probably a bad plan.

The rising smoke pollutes what is about as fragrant and as clean of air as you'll find on the planet. The Hawaii Health Department has now placed air quality monitors in Pahoa. And up the mountain at the entrance to Kilauea Volcano National Park, electronic signs flash "pool air quality," indicating, one assumes, the sulfur from the volcano, as it is in Yellowstone, may be hazardous to your health.

Fortunately, you don't have to travel far to lose the scent of burning brush or spewing sulfur. Just northeast of Pahoa, out on an eastern tip of land overlooking old lava fields the color of rust, air samples are taken as a gauge by which other air quality on the planet is judged. This side of the island is a rainforest; it rains a bit most every day. Between the rain and fragrant foliage, the air is left sweet and soft. Once you've breathed in this air, you'll never forget its scent, and will always welcome its sweet fragrance on your next trip to the islands.

Note: A magnitude 4.3 earthquake centered about 5 miles west-southwest of the summit of the Kilauea Volcano, and at a depth of 8 miles, struck Feb. 9. During the past 25 years, there have only been two earthquakes in this same general area with magnitudes greater than 3.0