Hawai'i's volcanoes are known for their placid natures. They seldom explode or send hot ash-flows down mountainsides. Kilauea is sometimes called the world’s only “drive-in” volcano. Good roads lead to the very edge and down inside its caldera, the broad basin formed by the collapse of the volcano’s cone.
Levels of Destruction
Kilauea’s eruptions tend to be spectacular but not explosive. Kilauea is the only readily-accessible erupting volcano that people are able to visit.
When most volcanoes in populated areas show signs of an impending eruption, emergency officials plan mass evacuations. Hawai‘i County Civil Defense includes crowd control as one of its main tasks. However, Hawai‘i residents and even mainlanders drop what they’re doing and reserve seats on aircrafts headed for the Island of Hawai‘i. It is important to note though that volcanoes, by their very nature destroy as well as create. While producing new land, they cover up the old and sear it with fire. Mauna Loa in its 1868 eruption caused a mudslide that destroyed a village; a 1926 flow overran the settlement of Ho‘opuloa; in 1950, three separate flows to the ocean wiped out the village of Ho‘okena Mauka. These infrequent eruptions can generate as much lava in a few days as Kilauea does in weeks or months.
Preventing Destruction
Geologists have considered several methods to prevent destruction from lava flows. They’ve tried building high walls and spraying the molten rock with water. So far, no particular measure has been entirely effective. One major problem: if you redirect lava, how do you decide whose property gets saved and whose is lost?
