Concern for Leilani Estates as lava moves eastward underground

[WestCoastGal]

It's funny, I came across this article yesterday. Drawn to it by the photo of the two cars near a house next to a lava flow. I remember seeing this image, maybe from one of the many overflight videos or maybe it was a Hawaii County Civil Defense aerial photo, and remember wondering at the time how the cars could just be left there with impending lava approaching. The image peeked my curiosity and I clicked the linked story.

An article about Stuff. Written so from the heart and mind of Myles Hewette. People are either collectors of it and surround themselves with it or live spartanly and somehow declutter their lives and live without much of it. I'm definitely the former and so I get that yeah stuff matters somehow. You can live without it but it's those triggers that take the mind to places in our past, memories recalled, smells and sounds, laughter and sometimes tears. It's part of us, things we hold on to sometimes for no reason and sometimes to cherish. It's not the sum of us but definitely a part of us, a window into who we have been and are today and maybe who we hoped to be tomorrow. Now I have my answer about the car. I loved reading Myles Hewette's story of "The White Car In the Yard". Hope you will too. 

https://medium.com/@myles.hewette/the-white-car-in-this-picture-zoom-in-on-the-left-is-the-rusting-metal-that-used-to-be-my-1980-2555d59cc148

 

[WestCoastGal]

USGS updates as of Tuesday, 7/10:

Alert as of 9:57am HST (12:57pm PDT): https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/status.html

No new photos, but the Map has been updated as of noon today.

Map: US Geological Survey

Looks kind of like a dreary morning what with the rain earlier and still heavy clouds overhead.

[Moose]

Wow Delta lava area (new land) is now covering 630 acres. The sea is not shallow there, that is am amazing amount of lava going into the ocean.  

[Moose]

 

 

Published on Jul 10, 2018

The Hawaii Kilauea Volcano East Rift Zone Eruption News Update for Leilani Estates 7/9/2018

[Moose]

 

 

Published on Jul 10, 2018

[Moose]

Civil Defense Message

 

 

Published on Jul 10, 2018

[Moose]

The Leilani Estates Letter ...

 

 

Published on Jul 10, 2018

[Moose]

 

Published on Jul 10, 2018

[Moose]

Another video just uploaded by Tim O'Hara

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TFTVxhbf0

 

 

Published on Jul 10, 2018

I spent the weekend in the Lava Zone, It's hard to explain, Heartbreaking but Awesome, This has been our playground for East Hawaii residents.This world we call home is just Incredible. I will have several more videos of other areas to share. I am editing as fast as I can to get them out. Thanks to all for your patience and support..

[WestCoastGal]

Philip Ong's middle of the day update, Tuesday, 7/10:

Photos from USGS and Ikaika on changes in Kapoho area. Ken Boyer talks about his observations in Leilani between 9 and 11 am today. He points out there have been more spillovers in the past week than there have been in the past month.

[WestCoastGal]

Extreme Exposure Fine Art Gallery shared this selection of aerial photos on fb Hawaii Tracker group. ( https://www.facebook.com/extremeexposurefineartgallery/photos/pcb.1855074021228569/1855006631235308/?type=3&theater&ifg=1 )

 

[WestCoastGal]

Nat Tomaselli, Noni Farms evacuee, returns home to check on his house only to find it ransacked and looted, a condition many evacuees fear when they had to evacuate and why many returned to stay despite conditions.

Story on Hawaii News Now online: http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/38616069/an-evacuee-returns-home-to-find-thieves-not-lava-had-taken-everything

and on their TV network broadcast: http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/clip/14480654/an-evacuee-returns-home-to-find-thieves-not-lava-had-taken-everything

 

 

 

[WestCoastGal]

Here's the fb live feed from Philip Ong who attended the Pahoa Community Meeting tonight. ( https://www.facebook.com/phil.hawaii/videos/10215629306787758/UzpfSTM1NzQ1NTU1NDQyMDI2OToxMDI3MDEzMjU0MTMxMTU5/ )

 

[WestCoastGal]

BTW I was having some playback issues with Philip's community meeting video, traffic congestion I suspect as it was stop and go throughout for me, but we should have another source tomorrow to listen to, either on Big Island Video News or Na Leo TV. Philip will also probably post to his YT channel but the images on fb aren't very crisp if you are trying to read the projector images and the sound being recorded a distance away from the stage/screen is a bit hard to hear at times. USGS, Mayor Kim and Talmadge Magno (CD) were there. Midway through the meeting they do a survey to poll attendees like they did last week with the remote participation clickers. Questions were to guage people on what they might like to see as far as future housing options.

The man who spoke in one of the videos Moose posted above at a council meeting bringing up the letter of uninhabitability was there at the meeting asking the same question again. He got an applause from the residents there. Basically from what I think I could make out, he got the same answer from officials at this point, that many officials from different gov't bodies were going to get together to work out a solution for everyone. Thought maybe they said they would meet tomorrow but not 100% sure. 

[WestCoastGal]

Aerial Photos and Video updates: 

Hawaii County Civil Defense updated their aerial video and photo album to July 9. Here's the link: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmiWXV9C  Right now only seeing 13 photos and videos but they may be in the process of uploading them still. Also the possibility they have July 10 to post. Will check back tomorrow. 

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Mick Kalber posted his July 10 video:

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The USGS website's photo section had some updated photos from Tues. 7/10 including this one showing Leilani with Nohea being the observable street.

Photo: US Geological Survey

 

[WestCoastGal]

Not a great way to start the day off here today. Here's Philip's very late night talk. He says it's gotten him into a sober mood. He said based on the photos by Scott Wilson at Sunset Tuesday night, it looks like a massive flow front is within a mile of the Kua O Ka La and the warm ponds and he thinks both might be reached by Wednesday morning. He said it looks like the flow near Kapoho Crater is moving south now around the back side of the crater. The braided portion of the channel that caused the big overflow yesterday cleared itself up. However there seems to be something blocking the flow that went around Kapoho Crater and into Kapoho Bay. It's now dark in the photo and instead the large area of active flow which looks like it's ponding at the backside of the crater is instead headed in another direction and bad news for the school and ponds. 

Haven't seen Scott's photos yet but here's a capture from the one that Philip was showing during his talk. To the right bottom corner is Kapoho Crater and as you can see the flow has ponded on it's approach to it and headed to the left in the photo.

 

and this image below shows the size and intensity of the flow heading south now. Bottom of screen is the area around Kapoho Crater with the warm ponds/school closer to the horizon straight ahead in the photo. I know Susie's charter school was a jewel for the community there and no one wanted to see this turn of events. 

The break off of chunks of lava from the channel walls and any from the cone is what is causing these flow disruptions in the channel leading to overflow and dangerous conditions depending on where that constriction happens in the channel. 

Philip finishes his talk by addressing the summit and earthquakes up there.

[WestCoastGal]

On a totally different topic but related to getting the news out and seeing photos, saw this post from last night on fb Puna lava updates. 

[WestCoastGal]

Here's the USGS portion of the Pahoa Community Meeting last night (7/10). So far only segment uploaded from the Big Island Video News site.

 

 

[WestCoastGal]

Big Island posted the balance of last night's Pahoa Community Meeting.

The opening portion:

Part 2 is the USGS portion that was posted above.

 

 

[WestCoastGal]

Jason shared this photo of the loss of Cajun Paradise Farms, his neighbor down the road and on the other side of Hwy 132 on the backside of Kapoho Crater.

Someone shared TripAdvisor's site for them. The site includes a number of photos showing what a nice travelers spot it was for anyone looking for a drink or a bite to eat.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g60603-d5420786-Reviews-Cajun_Paradise_Farms-Pahoa_Island_of_Hawaii_Hawaii.html

From the photos on their facebook page below of the food and drink, everything looked delicious. And making me hungry for lunch! Noticed their 2014 construction photos posted too as they were getting off the ground. Dreams planned for a farm and business (and maybe home above?) and now lost. Makes it even sadder to see in some ways. Hopefully they'll be able to rebuild somewhere in the Puna area. Would be a loss to the community otherwise. 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/CajunParadise/photos/?ref=page_internal

[WestCoastGal]

Pretty amazing view from Mauna Kea last night.

[WestCoastGal]

Photos Scott Wilson shared from his flight last night. Several of these were used by Philip Ong in his presentation. ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1882133805172209&set=pcb.1027151604117324&type=3&theater&ifg=1 )

 

[WestCoastGal]

Scott's photo and notation from last night. This was a section that had caught on fire from the brush fires.

 

[WestCoastGal]

And the school must go on and prepare for the new classes. 

https://www.gofundme.com/relocate-school-displaced-by-lava

[bgl]

Thanks Debbie and Moose for keeping this thread very much alive. I am trying to keep up with things, but have mostly been away from the island for the last couple of months (was only here for a total of five days in June) but I will be here most of July. That being said, not much to report other than the fact that there's really no change. "Pu'u Luana" keeps pouring out lava and is extremely active. And with immediate effect I refuse to call it "Fissure #8". This ceased being a "fissure" a long time ago! And since it happened right on Luana Street why not do the obvious and call it "Pu'u Luana"?  I know, not up to me but sometimes you just have to go with it.

Anyway, here are two photos looking east on Kahukai Street. Both photos taken from a location on Kahukai Street, between Makamae and Luana Streets with the second photo possibly being some 100 ft further back. But both are in the exact same direction. "Then and now". May 20th for the first photo and today, July 11th, for the second one. Incidentally, I ran into Scott (who has taken a lot of the photos and videos posted here) at 5:20 am, just before I took the second photo below.

[bgl]

This photo was taken on Luana Street, (but very close to the Kahukai intersection) looking south towards "Pu'u Luana", which is about a mile away. This is at a high point, and walking closer to the lava (which I did), you're getting lower down and the very tall lava berm is completely obstructing the view so the best view is from close to where Luana meets up with Kahukai Street.

[WestCoastGal]

20 minutes ago, bgl said:

Thanks Debbie and Moose for keeping this thread very much alive. I am trying to keep up with things, but have mostly been away from the island for the last couple of months (was only here for a total of five days in June) but I will be here most of July. That being said, not much to report other than the fact that there's really no change. "Pu'u Luana" keeps pouring out lava and is extremely active. And with immediate effect I refuse to call it "Fissure #8". This ceased being a "fissure" a long time ago! And since it happened right on Luana Street why not do the obvious and call it "Pu'u Luana"?  I know, not up to me but sometimes you just have to go with it.

Anyway, here are two photos looking east on Kahukai Street. Both photos taken from a location on Kahukai Street, between Makamae and Luana Streets with the second photo possibly being some 100 ft further back. But both are in the exact same direction. "Then and now". May 20th for the first photo and today, July 11th, for the second one. Incidentally, I ran into Scott (who has taken a lot of the photos and videos posted here) at 5:20 am, just before I took the second photo below.

I prefer Photo 1 as interesting as Photo 2 is.

Welcome back. Are you staying with friends in Leilani or back in Hilo? Must be tough seeing your home sitting there and not able to stay. I understand from something posted maybe within the last week or so that they are not allowing groups of people to go into the no-go area by themselves any more but only escorted in. In the past it looked like they would let groups go to different streets/houses after they got the instructions for the trip in, thereby accommodating more residents at one time who needed help evacuating things. They didn't say this, but I'm guessing it's an attempt to make sure people who do go in to check on their homes or leave food for their pets don't go wondering around. Maybe to control some looting, but so hard to imagine anyone who goes in to help others move their stuff out would take advantage of the situation with someone else's house. The looting was brought up in a few community meetings and pretty much CD said the police were aware. By the reaction I'd say the response left the resident bringing this up not very happy and wanted more done to prevent it. Is everything okay at your end?

[WestCoastGal]

So I understand there was an overflow today heading toward someone's home in Leilani Estates. Here's what I saw about it so far (fb Ryan Finlay Hawaii Tracker group): ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155893969340749&set=pcb.1027796857386132&type=3&theater&ifg=1 )

 

 

A reminder no doubt that Leilani has been relatively lucky with overflows in the past month but as USGS, CD and the guys at the HUB have cautioned the situation can change rapidly and as the HUB said there have been more overflows in the past week along the lava channel than in the past month. Given blockages and fluctuations in the flow of F8, hope everyone still in LE are monitoring things very closely. Did you guys get an alert about this? This is scary and a larger breach up in this section, well not something we want to see. Stay safe Leilani.

BTW just checked the USGS website and no new updates posted for Wednesday, 7/11 yet. Ryan mentioned seeing something on USGS's site so I'll check the fb one and post anything new.

[WestCoastGal]

OK here's the url for USGS's fb page. https://www.facebook.com/pg/USGSVolcanoes/posts/

The photos posted above in Ryan Finlay's post are the same shown on the USGS fb site. As you can see from the helicopter overflight image, there is fresh lava coming down from the levee in several places. 

Making this as large as I can from the USGS photo page image. You can click on it but not sure if it's noticably larger or not.

[WestCoastGal]

Interestingly here's Gabe's (YT H.I.S Survival) video taken around 5:30am HST. He said you can hear F8 and mentions a jet engine sound. The collapse explosion at Halema'uma'u occured at 5:45am HST.

 

Here's Scott's video from early this morning. He says the volume has subsided substantially. And he emphasizes "Substantially" and is all excited that it might be ending. 

 

@bgl, when you were down there were you aware that overflows were happening at some point? Curious how residents found out about this. From his video, Gabe definitely was unaware of any changes in flow down there.

[WestCoastGal]

G Brad Lewis shared this video from last night about the size of the lava boats floating down the huge river.  ( https://www.facebook.com/G.Brad.Lewis/videos/1396567407113542/ )

 

 

[bgl]

Debbie, when I walked on Luana Street this morning (5:20-5:30 am), I walked from Kahukai the relatively short distance south to the lava flow, which is all pahoehoe. I'm estimating a quarter of a mile, possibly a tad more. I even walked about halfway up the berm until I decided it wasn't such a good idea.  It was kind of brittle in places and the higher up you get the more steam you see. So I turned back. While halfway up the lava berm I had a good view of a large part of the surrounding areas (primarily west towards Nohea Street), both the lava field and some structures in the distance. There was zero sign of any overflow at that point and in that area.

 

EDIT - for the fun of it decided to google for the definition of "fissure" and this is what popped up at the top: "a narrow opening or crack of considerable length etc." I think we are WAAAY beyond a "narrow opening" at this point! 

 

[WestCoastGal]

So apparently 2 homes on Luana got taken out today according to USGS reports. Here's a post Dane DuPont made on fb Hawaii Trackers a little while ago. We should be getting an update later on from the HUB which will be interesting to listen to. BTW here's Dane's post's link to view the photos there. ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=171500633719086&set=pcb.1028020240697127&type=3&theater&ifg=1 )

From the photos above, several of LE overflows, it looks to me like maybe one house was down nearer F8 and the other at the other end of the overflows by Luana and Kahukai, but really hard to tell without comparing old photos, although it does seem to be the focus of the aerial shots. Sorry yet another 2 families have a loss. I'll check and see if Mick posted any video yet or if Hawaii County Civil Defense was out. I know overflights were cut back but hope this would have gotten them in the air and we know there was one helicopter at least out there from what USGS referenced.

[WestCoastGal]

Here's a fb link to Philip Ong's talk at the HUB today about the Leilani overflow and down by Kapoho's school and warm ponds. ( https://www.facebook.com/phil.hawaii/videos/10215635856511497/UzpfSTM1NzQ1NTU1NDQyMDI2OToxMDI3OTgwMTYwNzAxMTM1/ )

 

[WestCoastGal]

Guess it's time for some USGS updates:

New Alert as of 12:45pm HST today: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/status.html  Includes info on Leilani Estates overflow. It was not updated a the time that the two homes were lost on Luana though and don't know the status of any other properties immediately around there.

Photos, updated with Halema'uma'u collapse explosion event, Kapoho flow areas, Leilani overflow areas. https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/multimedia_chronology.html

Map was updated as of 1pm HST today. My husband noticed yesterday however that when they switched back to a map with fissure numbers on it, not everything transferred. He pointed out that a few days back there were two points of connection bridging the the northern lobe flow finger and the main channel flow along Hwy 132 that are not shown on the map being used now.

Map: US Geological Survey

The PGV cam:

[WestCoastGal]

New photos posted by Hawaii County Civil Defense in their Flickr album as of today 7/11. https://flic.kr/s/aHskEnaX1W

A few photos from it:

 

This one was an unusual angle viewing F8. Check out the cone shape from this view. I did a double check to make sure this was F8.

 

Overflow in Leilani Estates. 

Closer view of the house with the green roof near the channel:

 

Overflow closer to Kapoho Crater.

 

[WestCoastGal]

Ikaika and Philip are on Ikaika's boat Live right now streaming 9 min. ago. Ocean entry by Secrets. Lots of dead fish. It won't let me do a link, and the wind is pretty bad on the mic there so check it out if you are interested by just going to fb Hawaii Tracker group and locating the Live feed. Should be near the top of the thread. Posted by Ryan Finlay.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hawaiitracker/

 

[WestCoastGal]

Harry Durgin has been working on the Hwy 130 plate temperature calculations he started a few days ago. Has this to share. (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156424061909242&set=gm.1028106614021823&type=3&theater&ifg=1 )

Link to his website for it: http://harrysserver.com/plates.html

[WestCoastGal]

Big Island Video News of Hawaii County's Eruption Evacuee Update (7/10):

 

[WestCoastGal]

The school and warm ponds have been claimed too. Saw this come over 1 hr ago from Ryan. Very sad day 7/11.