Lava flows threatening Pahoa and HI 130

[BrianP]

Any other examples?

No not yet but give it a few days as that may happen again.  The lava flow may reach HI 130 again in the near future and not the closed part of the highway.  This time around the village of Pāhoa.  Although it won't be to the extent seen on the southern coast.   Unless the lava from Puʻu ʻŌʻō decides to keep flowing to the northeast for an extended period of time. 

They are paving two alternate roads in case HI 130 gets severed by lava again. 

[oscar]

No not yet but give it a few days as that may happen again.  The lava flow may reach HI 130 again in the near future and not the closed part of the highway.  This time around the village of Pāhoa.  Although it won't be to the extent seen on the southern coast.   Unless the lava from Puʻu ʻŌʻō decides to keep flowing to the northeast for an extended period of time. 

They are paving two alternate roads in case HI 130 gets severed by lava again. 

The lack of escape routes has long been a concern for that part of the Big Island.  But no permanent escape route ever got built, in part because disaster can strike pretty much anywhere, with tsunami risks along the coast east of Hilo, which is the part of the Puna district least at risk from lava flows.  There have been other recent lava closures before the current eruption started in the 1980s, but those were southwest and east of Pahoa where there are two major escape routes, and each eruption closed only one route (what is now HI 130 near Pahoa in the mid 1950s, and CR 132 and the north end of CR 137 in 1960).  The latest flow could sever HI 130 in the one place (between HI 139 in Keaau and old HI 130 on the west side of Pahoa) where there are no good alternate routes, thus the scramble to cobble some together.

Hard to predict whether any road-closing flow will wind up solidifying as a'a, pahoehoe, or a mix of the two.

BTW, a contingency plan is being thrown together to reopen Chain of Craters Road, to reconnect HI 130 to the main part of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  This has been tried before, but new lava flows kept re-closing the road (and keep crossing over or just underneath the old right of way), and after awhile Hawaii DOT gave up.  Since this alternate route is much closer to the eruption site at Puu O'o than the two other alternate routes north of Pahoa, and also involves a long detour through the park, I expect that the reopening of Chain of Craters will be a backstop in case lava flows start extending well north of Pahoa (which would be the National Park Service's preference, they don't want a lot of extra traffic through the park).  But Hawaii County is starting to bulldoze a path between the park boundary, and the existing lava viewing access road connecting intact fragments of the old HI 130 pavement.  The Park Service is also gearing up to cut a path on its part of the closed Chain of Craters Road.  Preliminary plans are for a one-lane gravel road with shoulders, at least initially.

See http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20140922_Lava_stops_advancing_in_Puna.html?id=276200671 (might be paywalled for most of you).  Also http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/chain-craters-road-construction-begin-tuesday (not yet paywalled, but that paper usually paywalls its articles pretty quickly).

[hm insulators]

Madam Pele (as Hawaiians call their volcano goddess) has been busy for over thirty years now. And the eruption of Kilauea shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. The Big Island is getting bigger even as I type this.

[oscar]

As has been widely reported, lava is on the move once more toward Pahoa, reaching its outskirts.  That includes covering part of an outlying Pahoa street, Apa'a Street.  A large-scale photo taken last Saturday, of the flow crossing the street and the burning asphalt at the flow front, is at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory site:

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/multimedia/uploads/multimediaFile-896.jpg

This is from HVO's Kilauea photo/video chronology page, which has a thumbnail of the above photo, and daily updates on the lava advancing on Pahoa.

I'll add an edited version of the above photo, and other photos later added to the HVO site, to my Lava Closures photos pages, the place for photos of burning asphalt and other road damage from the three-decade-old Kilauea eruption.

[oscar]

The lava flows have, for now, stopped their advance toward HI 130 and Pahoa Village Rd. (the main drag through Pahoa).  Hawaii DOT is taking advantage of the pause to experiment with laying aggregate over a lava-covered part of Apa'a Street, to figure out if that method could be used to speed up the reopening of HI 130 should the lava resume its advance and covers the highway:

http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/update-road-over-lava-county-state-assessing-options-highway-130

That could be an improvement over the options considered when lava from the Mauna Loa volcano covered a long stretch of what is now HI 11 ca. 1950.  Back then, the alternatives were to wait for the lava to cool down enough to run a bulldozer through it, or wait even longer for the lava to cool some more so that explosives could be used to blast a path.  I don't know if less heat-sensitive explosives are now available to make the latter a better option. 

The updated version of the article (revised link above) also covers progress on a temporary access road between Kalapana and Chain of Craters Rd. in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  This would provide another way out of Pahoa, should the lava flows sever not only HI 130 but also the new alternate routes set up closer to the coast.  One feature of the new road into HVNP is the plan to restrict access to local residents cut off by new lava flows, rather than allowing use by the general public.