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This is my first time watching an ongoing eruption for weeks. Cannot help wondering about the impact on local residents' daily life there. Is the eruption site far from densely populated areas on the big island? On the movie it looks like a wound that our skin cannot heal by itself. It is frightening while fascinating to watch it on the screen.
The original fissures came up right in the middle of Leilani subdivision which, although it's rural, was pretty built out. Which is why there's about 2,000 people evacuated and at least 40 structures (most of which were houses) are gone. Right next to Leilani is Lanipuna Gardens, that is a smaller subdivision and it's almost all covered with lava now.
As for the impact on folks' lives, it's different for each person impacted. Today, I met one of the ones who's house burned in Leilani within the first day or two of the eruption. She didn't seem all that upset that her house had burned up. I was rather surprised about that. She said they came to let everyone know it was time to evacuate and for some reason she'd thought she'd be back in her house the next day. So, she left with a two pairs of shorts, one spare pair of underwear and whatever she was wearing at the time. Her house burned so what she had is what she has. She's now staying on the Hamakua coast with some friends and fortunately her house burned before the lava got it so it was insured and they will pay out for the loss of her house. Had the lava touched the house before it burned, then it would be an 'act of god(dess)' and they wouldn't have had to pay.
I think she's a little relieved because at least for her, it's over. No need to worry if her house is still there or what condition it's in or if the roads are still there, etc., etc. It's gone and now she's starting over.
Some other friends are down in that area, but they are about four miles away and in a direction away from the direction the lava is flowing. They've shifted a lot of their things out of the way of the possible lava (some of it is at our house now) and now they're just watching to see if they need to evacuate. They've gotten respirators and face masks, so if the wind shifts the emissions towards them, they're ready.
They are saying they are having trouble getting things to their house. Apparently, they're too close to the possible lava to where the propane truck can deliver propane to their house. They have to go to the road block (residents only) to escort any workers they want to come out to their house. They had a leak in a pipe and had to escort in the plumber today.
This is my first time watching an ongoing eruption for weeks. Cannot help wondering about the impact on local residents' daily life there. Is the eruption site far from densely populated areas on the big island? On the movie it looks like a wound that our skin cannot heal by itself. It is frightening while fascinating to watch it on the screen.
It is indeed a breathtaking spectacle of Mother Nature, aka M. Pele'. The heat, the fountains of runny, fluid molten rock, the uplifting and fissuring, flowing rivers of molten, glowing rock, are all mesmerizing. A photo-journalists, and volcanology student's dream.
While it is to be fully-expected in that small corner of a small state, it is, nonetheless, a thrilling, albeit terrifying-for-some, sight-to-see when it happens.
After reading a lot of factual and speculative information from a variety of sources, I think it will be several weeks before this eruption significantly subsides, and this area of eruption may be the new normal, replacing PuuOo which became the main focus since the early 1980's. That Puu paved a lot of Puna with a layer of lava 80' deep in some places.
Hopefully those who are now homeless will have banked the money they saved when they decided to purchase in Puna, to serve as seed money for their new venture.
So how far away are from the lava flow? Hoping you all stay safe in my favorite place in the world! The media portrays this as the whole island cracking apart and tidal waves as next. Will this lava flow shake up all the volcanoes on the big island? I realize from having been there this is a small area of the island but we just don’t get that perspective here.
" She's now staying on the Hamakua coast with some friends and fortunately her house burned before the lava got it so it was insured and they will pay out for the loss of her house. Had the lava touched the house before it burned, then it would be an 'act of god(dess)' and they wouldn't have had to pay."
As I understand, damage by lava is considered 'earth movement' and is not covered similar to how earthquakes and landslides are not covered under a normal homeowners policy unless you get a specific rider for it. But unless you build your house of concrete or stone, it's going to be destroyed by fire, not lava earth movement. Fire damage is fire damage regardless if it is caused by putting a space heater too close to a curtain or by lava. In other words, if your house burns, you get paid. If it doesn't, you might not. Whether or not lava "contacts" your house prior to the fire is irrelevant because it's probably impossible to prove at exactly what point the fire started. (Fires can burn without visible smoke or flame).
Even if there is video evidence of the lava touching the structure before fire is visible, there is no way to determine if there was fire that pre-existed the lava contact. The homeowner gets paid if the house is burned.
I'm not aware of anybody with a standard homeowner's insurance policy that didn't get paid after their homes were burned by lava, but on the other hand this is an unusual event that so many homes were destroyed in a short period of time. I would be interested in hearing if anybody with a burned out home gets any grief from their insurance company.
Because Leilani is in LZ1, some of the homeowners there didn't have insurance due to the cost.
ETA: found this on esurance:
Volcanic eruptions
Rare as they may be (fortunately), even volcanic eruptions could be covered by your homeowners insurance policy in certain circumstances. Should a fire or other covered hazard, for instance, result from an eruption and damage your home, your policy would likely step in to repair your house and replace your belongings. But if the damage to your home is strictly related to the earth movement itself, you'll likely be responsible for getting repairs done.
Last edited by terracore; 05-24-2018 at 09:26 PM..
So how far away are from the lava flow? Hoping you all stay safe in my favorite place in the world! The media portrays this as the whole island cracking apart and tidal waves as next. Will this lava flow shake up all the volcanoes on the big island? I realize from having been there this is a small area of the island but we just don’t get that perspective here.
Well, at one point CNN said they were evacuating Oahu. There's a newspaper somewhere off in Europe (has an ".eu" at the end of the URL) that says the whole island of Hawaii is "blanketed in ash". Another one talks about desperate folks being airlifted out by a frantic squad of military helicopters, etc., etc. There's other 'news sources' which are speculating about a huge chunk of the island falling off into the ocean and creating a thousand foot tall tsunami. (insert big sigh and rolling eyes here)
The volcanic lava activity is very much localized to the one area in lower Puna. There's some ash emissions and more vog than usual. Most of the ash is from the Halemaumau crater up in Volcanoes National Park. Those are blown by the tradewinds towards the Ka'u district (southwards). These areas have been getting vog for years, and now it's heavier than usual, but not as dire as these various news sources depict. The ash heading that direction is new and not usual. Folks are wearing regular breath masks to filter out the ash but it's not piling up in heaps as you'd expect from some of those news sources. For folks down near the lava and the fumes from where the lava goes into the ocean, they're wearing respirators with filters.
For most of Hawaii Island,it's not much different than any other day. In the area of the lava flow, it's a huge mess, but it's still very localized to the lower Puna area.
What we've been seeing is a panic among the prospective tourists. Some friends of mine with a BnB (the regular kind, not an Air BnB, at least, that's what they say, I'm not quite sure what the difference is) Anyway, they've had all kinds of cancellations because the visitors don't want to be eaten by the volcano. The volcano is about seventy miles away from their BnB and upwind of the crater so there's not even any vog at their place.
We were at Costco last week and the place was almost deserted. Usually there's a significant amount of tourists there stocking up on their way to their condos.
A friend of mine had her daughter visiting last week. The daughter mentioned there were extra seats on their plane when they came over so they were able to stretch out and sleep across three seats on the way over.
Our economy is tourist driven, it will be interesting to see how far the numbers have dropped when the folks who count tourists come in with the numbers for this month. It'd also be curious to see how widespread the cancellations are, some folks may even cancel their Hawaii vacation even if they're staying on another island.
I think it was in the first week of the eruption, but I didn't take notes. For the first several days or so, it seemed all the news reporting was all the local news folks. Guess it takes awhile to mobilize national news folks.
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