Tag Archives: Lava

Lava

How About Mauna Loa?

September 16, 2014 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

photo of current Puna flow, taken from Kaloli Pt. in Hawaiian Paradise Point by Keith Kefford / Hawaii News Now

As lava from Kilauea’s Pu‘u ‘O‘o vent approaches the town of Pahoa – right now authorities estimate lava will reach the town in 20 days – Mauna Loa has been in the news, too.

The Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald reported on Saturday that Mauna Loa “has been rumbling and showing signs of awakening for over a year.”

…An eruption isn’t imminent, and no warnings are being issued, but the towering 13,678-foot mountain is going through the same motions that it did before its 1984 and 1975 eruptions, said Wes Thelen, HVO seismologist.

The activity includes faint, shallow earthquakes to the west of the summit and “deep long period” temblors 45 to 50 kilometers below the surface, both of which point to the intrusion of magma.

“All the signs are there that tells us that magma is moving into the shallow system,” Thelen said.

He said monitoring equipment, much more sophisticated than what was in place in the 1980s, is continually detecting magnitude 0.5 quakes about 7 kilometers below the surface in the same areas where activity was detected in the years leading up to the last eruptions.

Thelen noted he is confident the small earthquakes are a recent development.

He said HVO is seeing the same type of activity “in the same place at the same depth, and that leads us to believe, even though those earthquakes are smaller, it’s probably the same process that’s going on as was occurring before the 1975 and 1984 eruptions.”

According to HVO’s website, the rate of shallow earthquakes at the summit has increased over the last few months. Earthquake activity remains elevated on the Upper Southwest Rift Zone and West Flank…. Read the rest

From Hawaii News Now: Video: What could happen when Mauna Loa erupts?

And from the Hawaii News Now accompanying article:

“When it will happen, no one knows. However, scientists say the chance of Mauna Loa erupting again is virtually 100% and the consequences could be disastrous.

In 1881, lava almost reached Hilo. Princess Ruth prayed to Madam Pele and it stopped. In 1926, a fast-moving flow 50-feet high wiped out the fishing village of Ho’opuloa. In 1950, lava covered homes in pahoehoe. Residents literally ran for their lives.

When Mauna Loa erupted in 1984, media crews and tourists came from around the world. The lava crept within a few miles of Kaumana, glowing at night.

“I stay awake all night tossing and turning… looks like it’s right out the window,” said a nearby resident….”

I can remember wondering, back then, what we would do if the lava reached the ocean. Our banana farm was at Kea‘au; would we have access to the docks?

Mauna Loa erupts on average every six years, according to volcanologist Frank Trusdell—but the last time it erupted was 1984. It came to within about four miles of Hilo.

Here’s a KITV video about Mauna Loa’s past eruptions, and preparing for future ones.

Lava, Where We Live

Inside A Lava Tube

September 11, 2014 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

Back in the ‘80s, there was a fire in Maku‘u between Hawaiian Paradise Park and Hawaiian Beaches. It burned all the way down to the ocean.

I used to do a lot of dirt bike riding back then with my brother-in-law Dennis Vierra and Wayne Blyth. When the fire was out, they made some roads around the perimeter, and any excuse to ride the bikes, right? We went exploring.

We went in by an old hunter’s trail that started near the Maku’u farmers market, and we saw something really strange. There were all these really tall trees that weren’t burned. They were green, and really tall. They were growing through a hole in the lava, and it turned out it was the entrance to a lava tube—the top had collapsed and the trees had grown on top of it. It collapsed a long time ago, because those trees were huge.

We went to explore and we found an entrance into that lava tube that was set up with rocks and nice stone work. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to fix it really nicely so you could walk into it, but not too many people at once. Maybe so people couldn’t attack it. Or in case someone was guarding the entrance?We thought it was neat and decided to go back again the next week when we would bring flashlights.

So we went back a week later with our mountain bikes and brought gloves and flashlights and we went into the cave, and it was pretty interesting. The first thing we saw were enormous ‘opihi shells. I’ve never in my life seen ‘opihi shells that size come out of the ocean there in Puna. They were bigger around than a coffee cup. Maybe half again bigger. There were quite a lot of them. And we saw charcoal, so it looked like people had made fires there.

We started walking. The cave was maybe ten or fifteen feet high in places. The top had collapsed over time and there was a pile of rubble maybe three or four feet high in the middle, so you had to walk on either side of it.

It wasn’t perfectly round, but it got narrow on the left and right edges and looked like there were shelves, like you could set things there, or maybe hide bodies there, but none of us said that out loud. And we didn’t dare go look.

We kept walking, maybe about a mile and then we came to what looked like a dry waterfall. The shape of the lava went uphill and we could feel fresh air at the top, so we climbed up and kept going.

Toward the end, we found more rock work. At that end, only one person at a time could pass through the narrow opening someone had created rocks. It led to an opening at the top so we could leave the lava tube, and we came out in the forest.

We had absolutely no idea where we were. No idea at all. It was still light out but we had no way to find civilization.

It was pitch dark in the lava tube, but we knew that was the only way we could find our way back, so we went back in. We went back the way we’d come and we started going faster and faster, because it was kind of spooky in there.

About halfway through we realized we could see some diffused light coming from the ceiling. There was a hole in the ceiling where the lava was very thin.

And what occurred to me was that if anyone was walking in the forest above and fell through into the lava tube, they would have absolutely no way of finding their way out. Without a flashlight, it’s pitch dark and you absolutely wouldn’t be able to find your way out at all. That would just be it. It was a scary thought.

I don’t know if it’s a place where people used to hide. Or was it a burial cave? How many hundreds of years ago was that? I couldn’t see any evidence of people having lived in that area – no taro lo‘i or anything. There were no trails there. Who built that stone work? Who did all that work? It was very organized. Was it to protect themselves? Did they have people out there at the entrances?

We only went into it that one time, and it’s still out there somewhere, between Pahoa and Ainaloa on the transfer station side of the highway, and I’m sure there are many others, too. I hadn’t thought about that in many years, but now with all the lava moving through the area and going down into cracks and everything, it came to mind. It was an interesting experience.

From Big Island Video News:

PUNA, Hawaii – Lava is a mere three tenths of a mile from entering Kaohe Homesteads, reports Hawaii County Civil Defense. An evacuation has not yet been ordered for residents of Kaohe but that could change at any time. Civil Defense personnel will be conducting door to door surveys and notification in the subdivision starting today.

Read the rest

Biofuel, Geothermal, Iceland, Travel, Water

Still in Iceland, Still in Shorts

August 3, 2011 Richard Ha 5 Comments

We landed in Iceland, where the temperature is mild – it’s in the mid 50s. My shorts and a jacket are working very well, so far. I’m going to stay in shorts as long as it makes sense.

We took a cab into Reykjavik. My first observations were that there are hardly any trees, and that the lava base is very familiar to those of us who live on the east side of the Big Island.

My most significant observation was that there are no overhead electric lines. Everything is underground.

We passed an aluminum manufacturing company on our way in.

I expected it to be belching black smoke, but there wasn’t even a wisp of steam. It looked very benign. We have to visit those folks.

We checked into the hotel. Here’s the view from the hotel.

Then we got a car and went down to the Blue Lagoon. We went in the water and stayed in for maybe two hours; I’m not sure, because I lost track of time. It felt good to relax and get the kinks out after that long trip.

It was sea water with a very slight smell of sulfur, and you could open your eyes under water. People had silica mud spread all over their faces for its therapeutic value. I imagine the silica had the consistency of the stuff women put on their faces at a spa. It was very fine and actually felt kind of good. But I bet it would raise all kinds of problem in the geothermal pipes when it hardens and coats the surfaces.

That’s a geothermal well in the background.

There is a live webcam at the Blue Lagoon!

After that, we explored downtown Reykjavik.

We walked up and down the old city, which has a European feel.

It’s very nice and clean, and things were hopping on a Sunday night. We had to wait more than an hour on our third attempt to get a seafood dinner.

David Stefansson (the project manager at Reykjavik Geothermal) and his wife Olga Fedorova (an international trade lawyer and Russian translator) took us for coffee. They are very nice, friendly and fascinating people and we had a wide-ranging conversation. They told us a lot about the history of Iceland and its people in the context of moving from coal to geothermal many years ago. And in that conversation, we learned that the island’s trees had been cut down many years ago for fuel.

Of course, this all makes a lot of sense. It kind of makes me think of what can happen with biomass.

I want to learn more about the leaders who forced the change that has made the Icelandic people one of the most prosperous people in the world (notwithstanding the disaster that the banking industry recently placed upon the people. They apparently confused capital with energy.)

People here reserve Sundays for family time. It’s kind of like the old plantation days in Hawai‘i. Monday was a national holiday and so we went exploring.

One of many waterfalls in Iceland.

And another one. Iceland has incredible amounts of water from the glaciers.

I happened to be looking through the lens and saw this starting, so I recorded it. This kind of thing happens at random here:

Here’s one of the few products grown in Iceland.

Most are brought in from Europe or the Middle East.

Stay tuned. Much more to come!

Read Part 1 of my Iceland trip here.

Geothermal

Hawaii: Roots of Fire

July 18, 2011 Richard Ha

I just happened to run across Hawaii: Roots of Fire, a new PBS documentary about the hidden forces driving the planet’s largest and most active volcanic system – the one here in the Hawaiian Islands.

Here’s a clip from the documentary:

This is especially significant because geothermal energy has been so prominent in political discussions here these last few days.

According to the documentary, the lava upwelling that formed the chain of islands up to the Aleutians Islands originated from below the mantle, and maybe even from the earth’s core. This process has been going on for 75 million years.

Geothermal energy does not come from the “hot spot.” It originates in stored heat from old lava flows. So the use of geothermal energy does not interfere with Pele’s ability to make land. Lava for new land (like the new island Lo‘ihi that is forming on the bottom of the ocean right now) comes directly from the hot spot.

This next video is also worth a look. It’s a podcast that lets you tour some of the Big Island’s geologic and cultural sites.

Take a virtual tour of the Big Island of Hawaii’s unmatched volcanic features with volcano expert Dr. Donald DePaolo of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. This tour is hosted by geologist and filmmaker Doug Prose, co-producer of Hawaii: Roots of Fire. You will visit eleven important geologic and cultural sites on the Big Island outside of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It starts in Hilo and ends at South Point. If you want to see these amazing places in person, download the map and take it with you. Allow a few days to visit every place quickly, but you could easily spend a full day at each place exploring!