Destruction and Science

HAWAI‘I’S VOLCANOES ARE known for their placid natures, as volcanoes go. 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. Trails twist along its steaming vents.

Levels of Destruction

 

Today, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park invites people into the very heart of volcano country, so frighteningly described by Bingham, Twain, Bird and Brassey. Kilauea’s eruptions tend to be spectacular but not explosive, and despite the powerful language used by the early writers, such graphic descriptions were only possible because they could get close enough to the fire pit to see the flames, feel the rumbles and experience the heat. Kilauea is the only readily-accessible erupting volcano that people flock to, instead of run from. When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the devastation was immense. Pinatubo, in 1991 in the Philippines, destroyed villages and blanketed the entire planet with a thin cloud of volcanic particles. For several years, this ash in the atmosphere gave us spectacularly colorful sunsets. Before these incidents, the most spectacular world event was in Krakatoa which exploded in 1883, destroyed a whole island, and unleashed a huge tsunami.
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 aircraft headed for the Island of Hawai‘i. But 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. Much of this hot rock stays high on the 13,700-foot mountain, but in some cases a flow will develop a distinct channel that directs it toward costal settlements.

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. Aircraft were used experimentally to bomb Mauna Loa flows in 1935 and 1942. 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? This question has prevented heroic measures to redirect lave in more recent times. However, the Mauna Loa Observatory that stands at 11,000 feet has a huge protective dike of lava rock between it and the summit in an attempt to protect the buildings from being overrun by a fast-moving Mauna Loa flow.

 

The need to be able to understand and predict the behavior of the Hawai‘i volcanoes, along with simple scientific curiosity, led to the study of volcanoes. This in turn led to the founding of a world-famous institution: the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.