Kilauea Volcanic Eruption 2018
And the Lava Flow story that affected us at Polestar and all our neighbors too!
The Big Island of Hawaii is made up of 5 different volcanoes and one of them is called Kilauea Volcano. In early May of 2018 more than 20 cracks, or fissures began opening up along one of the shoulders of Kilauea Volcano. This is a photo of the infamous Fissure 8 (Ahuʻailāʻau) which opened about 3 miles away from Polestar. The name is pronounced “ah hoo eye la ow” and means altar of the volcano deity.
Eventually the molten lava river from Fissure 8 made its way to Polestar. On May 29th, 2018 we had to evacuate because the lava flow was about to cover our driveway.
The red and green roofs in the upper left hand corner of this photo are Polestar’s buildings.
The edge of the river of lava covered our access road and went along our northern property border but DID NOT come on the property.
Eventually the river of lava reached the ocean 3 or 4 miles further downhill from us. Other lava rivers from other fissures on the other side of us continued to the ocean and surrounded us and over 40 of our nearby neighbors. All roads were now covered with lava so we had no access to the property except through arduous hiking.
For about 2 months our Polestar property sat next to and downwind from the large flowing molten lava river. Heat and SO2 (sulfer dioxide) blew over the property. The jungle plants and trees all dried out and most died. Everything went from green to brown. And everything was covered in a fine black soot.
This photo was taken from the opposite side of the river of lava than Polestar.
Arrow #1 points to a light that was on in the Polestar Main house.
Arrow #2 points to the glow from Fissure 8 where all this lava was coming from.
Look for these things in the video below.
On a daily basis, the lava emerging from underground would “burp” or pulse. This, in turn, would cause a “wave” or surge to travel down the river of lava, very often causing the molten lava to overflow its banks and ooze out onto the land on either side of the river.
When it oozed out onto the parched areas down wind it started fires. At first it was just grass fires that weren’t big enough to catch buildings on fire. But as things got drier and drier the fires managed to ignite the trees as well.
You can see one of the river overflows in this picture to the right.
In the video above you can spot a brown hill (pic here to the left) on the other side of the lava.
In the middle of the night on July 28th, 2018 there was an overflow that caught this area on fire. It was an overcast day but folks out in boats early in the morning could see a big glow and knew something big was burning.
On July 29th, 2018 at least 10 homes burned and Polestar’s main house and meditation temple were among them. It was an overcast day and by the time the skies cleared enough for the planes to fly in the evening to see what happened, there was hardly any smoke, just ash.
8 days later on August 5th, 2018, Fissure 8 (Ahuʻailāʻau) mostly stopped producing lava and the 2018 Kilauea volcanic eruption began to wind down.
Here is Ahuʻailāʻau after it stopped erupting.
You can see the neighborhood of Leilani Estates in the background. You can compare the picture with the photo at the top of this page when it was active.
The buildings burned at the end of July, 2018. We were allowed access to a rough road put in over the cooling lava flow to be able to drive home on April 1, 2019; 8 months later.
