August 08, 2004

This Week's Saturday Slant Week 22 Year 2

Encircled by Lava: Home in Kalapana, Puna, Hawaii April 1990 USGS photo

Evicted From Your Town
Your current home town has just been declared inhabitable; everyone must move out of the town. Where would you move? Why there? If you have a significant other, roommate, or other co-habitants, how would the necessity to move affect your relationship with him or her? Would s/he move with you?

This is great... a real live senario that is a clear and present possiblity daily here on the Big Island. This actually happened almost 15 years ago in two towns less than 10 miles from my house in Puna. The photo graphically shows pahoehoe lava encircling the house. In a minute or so from when this pic was taken the wooden house will explode into flames from the incredible heat. Our insurance policies on our homes will cover the structures as they burn pretty much to the ground prior to the lava inudating them.

Fortunatly, you get a lot of warning most of the time and this house was vacant. Many homes were lifted off foundations and moved to new lots. The Catholic church is Kalapana was moved to a safe location. But if you go to this web site you will see the incredible reshaping of the land as Kilauea Volcano' lava overlays existing land and creates new land on our island.

What would we do. First we would waste no time on false hopes. We would move out and put most of our things in storage, and our cats in boarding in Keaau or bring them with us and likely move into the back of the store. I think if the situation was really bad we'd move back to the mainland on the insurance money, for there is no rebuilding for years after an erruption. I must say thought, that there are people building right now on that 1990 flow, on land that they have owned since then. You have full,unobstructed, startling veiws of the ocean, but it is like living in the desert and its very hot and bleak on the black pahoehoe (smooth lava)

Because the volcanoes here are so well monitored (notice the plural we have two of the worlds most active (Kilauea and Mauna Loa) one that is sleeping but highly dangerous and has caused more deaths in recorded history than the others,(Hualalai) Another that is "sleeping" but could awaken (Mauna Kea) and a true dormant (Kohalla), I dont think that lava is what will do us in. Earthquakes (some of the worst in the hemisphere in the last two centuries were here; an estimated 8.6 on the south rift of Mauna Loa and a 7.6 epicentered 12 miles from us in Kalapana)) and Tsunami (we had two major ones in the last century, one in 1946 and the other in 1960 that killed 100s, and wiped out Hilo. )A hurricane has never hit the Big Island in recorded history, but these are strange times weather wise...These are likely culprits.

I also think that we are a open target for the terrorists. Jamal Islamya, and the Phillipine branch of Al-Queda have scoped out targets here. The more radical Sovergnty groups are based here, all of which make the idea of 9-11 Hawaiian style a possiblity.

Paradise without risk would be a sappy thing not worth the trouble of striving for. After all, God allowed the Devil to enter Eden. The risks test our resolve, and demand that we hold this gem of creation dearly. When all is said and done, anything thats not worth struggling for its not worth having...