One piece of welcome news for many is that Highway 130 (Pahoa-Kalapana Road) has been opened up again, so vacation rentals and other businesses are able to resume their services.
The first video is with Representative Tulsi Gabbard, but has some excellent views of the flowing and/or bursting lava. As does the second one, with the scientist, who gives more information about the current eruption. And if you’re on the Big Island, you may want to check in with the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park (click link, then “Alerts”) before you go, and see if it’s open.
“Officials have closed Hawaii Volcanoes National Park until further notice, and evacuations are underway in light of Friday’s major earthquakes.
“There have been trees that are dropping on trails. There are collapses along the Kilauea caldera wall where there’s been numerous rock falls dropping into the crater,” said Jessica Ferracane, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park public affairs specialist. “Here at Halemaumau, we’ve had the lava lake also drop suddenly yesterday, and that is causing explosions and rocks to fall into the lava itself, and creating big ash clouds, little explosions here at the summit, so it’s not safe to be here right now and we made the decision this afternoon to go ahead and close,” she added.
“Ferracane noted that the seismic activity has caused cracks to appear on park grounds. “These cracks are part of the reason why we decided to close. You don’t normally see cracks around here near the Jaggar Museum where we are right now. These are a result of that increased seismic activity that you saw today,” she said. “As that magma source is moving into the East Rift Zone, that’s leaving the southwest part of the crater to settle into that… so these cracks have opened up that you saw earlier. There’s no telling if there’s lava or magma in them, but they’re just a settling reaction to that movement out into the northeast.””