One person’s story of living through the 2018 volcanic eruptions in Leilani Estates. Tam Hunt is a writer and lawyer living on the Big Island; he is writing a novel about the Big Island, The Weight of Happiness.
If you’re not careful, living with lava may quickly add years to your spiritual growth. Trial by fire indeed. My home in Leilani Estates hangs by a thread and Pele may cut that thread at any moment. So it goes.
Like a lot of people on the Big Island of Hawaii, I was attracted to this area not only by lush jungles, beautiful beaches, a relaxing culture, and year-round warm weather, but also by surprisingly affordable real estate.
It’s a not-so-secret fact that you can buy a few acres in Puna, the southeast portion of the Big Island that is as large as all of Oahu, for as little as $20,000 in areas like Hawaiian Acres and about twice that amount in neighboring Orchidland, a few miles from the ocean. An acre can be had in Hawaiian Paradise Park, part of which is ocean front real estate (cliffs, not beaches, because it’s young and volcanic land), for $30–90,000.
There are over a dozen large subdivisions in Puna, developed initially in the late 50s and sold actively through the 70s and 80s. Each subdivision has its pros and cons, but none is more charming or beautiful than Leilani Estates. Leilani consists of one-acre lots, the large majority 100 feet by 473 feet, which is a nice size for maintaining a large yard and garden and to still feel like you live in a rural area. Lots in Leilani used to sell for $15–35,000, depending on location and whether the lot is cleared or not.
Leilani is almost unique in Puna in having rules about how to build — homes must be at least 800 square feet and include a garage or carport — and what kinds of animals you can raise — no chickens or pigs allowed, for example. The end result of Leilani’s rules is that you don’t have rooster farms next door and you have homes that are generally attractive and well-maintained. Leilani’s little country lane driveways, distinguished by well-maintained grass medians and shoulders, are common and achingly beautiful.
For this Punatic, Leilani is the gem in the heart of Puna. I’ve lived there for a year and a half now, until being evicted by an angry volcano goddess.
Leilani also happens to be the only subdivision that lies fully in the riskiest area for lava, known as “lava zone 1.” There are nine lava zones on the Big Island, with zone 1 being the most at risk. Zone 1 consists of the “rift zone” of Kilauea, Hawaii’s most active volcano by far. The “rift” is where Kilauea meets Mauna Loa, its much larger and older sister. The rift zone is defined as an area where lava can literally bubble up to the surface without notice.
Kilauea has been spewing lava steadily for 35 years now, most of it directly south into the ocean. But occasionally Pele decides to explore other areas and remind us humans of her power.
Little paradise
She wasn’t my dream home. Not yet at least. But she was beautiful and growing more beautiful by the day.
I bought a house in the heart of Leilani Estates in early 2017. I’d been looking for many months, had made a number of rejected offers on other homes, and had gone through a different escrow for three months on another home in Leilani, which ultimately failed, before I finally completed my purchase of a home on Moku Street, right in the center of Leilani.
It wasn’t love at first sight. It was, instead, a slow burn kind of love affair. I fixed her up in various ways, personalizing her for my tastes, adding artsy touches, making her more comfortable for myself and for entertaining guests, and before long she really began to shine. (See pictures below).
After living in my slice of paradise for a while, I came around to the realization that I might die in this home. I envisioned myself growing old, raising kids, and running for many many years on Leilani’s varied, lovely and quiet streets, to keep fit and to steadily deepen my feel for my surroundings. Until, slowly, my runs would turn into walks, as I aged in place.
Things change. Plans change. My poor home is now, after the recent volcanic eruptions in Leilani Estates, battered and bruised, but still standing — for now. Here’s what happened.
Evacuate!
A swarm of earthquakes began to be felt Wednesday evening in the first week of May, the first serious warnings of volcanic activity. A number of cracks opened up on roads around the northeast portion of Leilani. I own a vacant lot in that area of Leilani, on Kahukai Street, that I was fixing up to eventually build another home. But the house where I live is on a hill on south Moku Street a couple of miles away from the activity, so I wasn’t that worried.
My girlfriend, who is more of a worrywart than I am, by far, felt concerned enough by this news that we grabbed our two cats, who both lived at my house in Leilani, and catnapped them up to her house in Hilo.
I was hosting a large fundraiser dinner at my house the next day, May 3, on behalf of the Kalani retreat center located on the Red Road in lower Puna [update 5/20: lava crossed the Red Road last night near Mackenzie State Park], where I am on the board of directors. I sent an email to our dinner guests the night before the dinner, apprising them of the situation but letting them know that we were going ahead with the dinner regardless. We would understand, I told them, if they chose not to attend.
At around 4 PM on May 3, as preparations for our lovely Thai-inspired meal, with all local ingredients, by chef Anon Shine wrapped up, I left my house for some last minute shopping in Pahoa and to check on my lot on Kahukai Street in the northern part of Leilani. I discovered a number of cracks on Kahukai Street and others, already marked by residents, with the largest one about five inches wide on Kaupili Street.
No steam or sulfur smell was emitting from the cracks so I assumed they were from the earthquakes rather than volcanic activity below ground. This may have been the most inaccurate “scientific” conclusion of my life since just a few minutes after I stuck my foot in the widest crack to check it out I was told by a woman driving by in her car that an eruption had just begun literally a block over, on Mohala Street.
Oh shit. That explained the loud construction noises I had heard from that direction. I had assumed it was a bulldozer clearing land or moving large objects. The sound I had heard was in fact from Mohala Street, where the first fissure opened on that May 3 afternoon at around 4 o’clock. The rift zone had been rifted and lava was spattering.
I returned to my house and, after telling everyone that was part of the dinner prep what I had learned, we decided to still go ahead with the dinner (!), but we would let the invitees know this new development via email. This decision may sound a bit crazy, since the newly opened fissure was only about two miles from my house. But we couldn’t smell or hear anything from the eruption at my house and when you live near an active volcano for a number of years, learn her ways, and learn how slow-moving Kilauea lava is, as well as the topography of the land near us, it wasn’t that crazy to still go ahead with the dinner.
Things changed again, and plans changed again. Shortly after 5 PM we heard that a mandatory evacuation of Leilani Estates and neighboring Lanipuna Gardens, a smaller subdivision to the east of Leilani, was in effect. At that point, we canceled the dinner and packed things up, vowing to re-schedule shortly.
Pele wanted to dine alone? So be it. She would dine alone. We were honored.
My partner up in Hilo, with our two cats safe and sound, was worried stiff. She begged me repeatedly over the phone to leave immediately. I didn’t feel any particular hurry, however, because I do know how the lava usually behaves. A part of me, nevertheless, recognized that this was a new game that Pele was playing, at least it was for this generation living on her flanks.
Even though she had come within a hair’s breadth of Pahoa three times in late 2014 and early 2015, that lava flow was a traditional slow ooze of lava from Pu’u O’o that took months to reach Pahoa town, the main town in lower Puna. Amazingly, it reached the outskirts of the town and, three times in a row, stopped before crossing the main road. So the risk in that event was known well ahead of time and there was ample time to react to the risk.
This time around, lava was literally bubbling up from the ground and cracks were appearing all over the place. In this kind of scenario, early in the event, I had no assurances that massive cracks or lava wouldn’t appear in my front yard or along the roads I needed to navigate to get out of Leilani. With controlled alacrity, then, I packed up my essentials, watered the plants, and locked up the house. I even closed the gate, a first for me at this house.
I worried as a I drove away that it might be the last time I saw my house. The only valuables that I would really miss, that would be truly irreplaceable, was my substantial library of books that I had collected over the previous 30 years. The books could be replaced, but not my notes in those books (I’m a copious notetaker). I also realized later that I had left my tax files. Oops.
Warning! Sulfur Dioxide at dangerous levels.
I’ve learned that sulfur dioxide — which can turn into sulfuric acid on contact with oxygen or water — is nasty but not as nasty as the authorities suggest. I’ve taken a faceful of the stuff on a few occasions now, directly from lava vents, before and during the eruptions, and while it’s definitely unpleasant, and can cause coughing fits, it’s neither excruciatingly painful nor life-threatening for the vast majority of healthy adults.
You see, I’ve been something of a lava chaser in my almost five years on and off on the island. I’ve hiked to crater rims a number of times and right up to live lava flows. Witnessing nature’s most awesome creative destruction is a big part of the appeal of living on the Big Island, site of the most active volcano in the world.
Kilauea is a constant presence for those who live in Puna. We literally live on her flanks because Puna consists almost entirely of the eastern and southern slope of Kilauea mountain (upper Puna is part of massive Mauna Loa mountain). You can’t live here and not know about Kilauea’s moods, vog (a portmanteau of volcanic and smog, itself another portmanteau) levels in the air that can cause throat and eye irritation, and occasional threats to human habitations from her lava flows.
The 2015 lava flows that threatened Puna were a recent reminder of Kilauea’s destructive potential. Aloha from Lavaland is an entertaining and rich documentary covering these events.
The message from the 2015 flows was clear: Pele could take us out at a moment’s notice. So don’t mess with Pele.
Wait, who’s this Pele? Glad you asked. Pele is the volcano goddess who lives in Kilauea. She is a fickle and powerful being who may raise you up or cut off your head with no notice, and it’s all the same to her. But she is also the creator of new land and new worlds, literally, and without her we would have no life. She appears sometimes in human form, in a white or a red dress, as a young beautiful woman or a wizened old woman testing the kindness of strangers.
A lot of people heard Pele’s message but didn’t listen. I was one of those. I even asked myself (rhetorically) when I was buying my house: “how dumb are you to be buying in Leilani just two years after Pele’s show of force?”
In retrospect it seems even dumber.
Or does it? Leilani Estates hadn’t been covered in lava in hundreds of years. The number of homes destroyed by Pele this time is still only around 30 (but growing), and in 2015, it was only one. The disruption to normal life for all Punatics, however, was far larger, in both eruptions, than the number of homes lost would suggest. Economic losses from reductions in property values, loss of vacation rentals, and loss of use more generally will be felt for some time. Our poor Puna is being destroyed before our very eyes. For now. We will rebuild.
The upside of Pele’s incursions is that she keeps things interesting and, importantly, she keeps things affordable. And after every previous event the area has bounced back. Puna will recover. We just don’t know how long it will take. Or even when the recovery can begin because the destruction process is still very much underway.
When can the ashes transform into the phoenix? We don’t know yet.
I bought my house in Leilani knowing full well what the risks were. Leilani hadn’t been covered with lava in hundreds of years — until it was. I got a beautiful home for far less than I would have paid elsewhere on the island, let alone what I would have paid in Santa Barbara (where I moved from) or other places in coastal California. And along with that good price I got a relatively high risk of lava. So be it. It was a calculated risk and now I’m paying the price. Thank Goddess for insurance…
The slow-moving disaster
After the first fissure opened, a number of other fissures in the same area quickly opened. By the end of the second day, we were up to six fissures. By the end of the first week we were up to 15 fissures. It’s still unfolding as I write this. We’re now up to 22 fissures on May 19. Some of those fissures have spewed lava up to a mile or so; most haven’t spread lava more than fifty feet. [May 20 update: the situation changed rather dramatically last night as a breakout pahoehoe flow from fissure 20 and others made it to the ocean over the Red Road.]
But here’s the thing: to date almost no one has been seriously injured in this series of disasters, let alone killed. Pele’s kind of disaster is a pretty benign form of disaster, as disasters go. In the 2015 scare when Pele almost reached Pahoa, only one home was taken and people could literally outwalk her without risking a sweat.
Mine may be next. I’ve been back to my house a number of times after I evacuated. It’s right next to an active lava fissure. My poor neighbors’ house was taken almost immediately by this new fissure that erupted through their garage and burned down their house.
My house and yard were covered by lava spatter turning into rocks in mid-flight. The grass and plants were quickly killed off by sulfur dioxide. New cracks appeared in my driveway, the road in front of my house, and in my frontyard. My palm trees began to fall down from being baked alive at the roots. My catchment tank slumped and decayed.
On my last visit on May 18, a massive new crack about four feet wide opened up in my backyard. The crack extended diagonally to my other neighbors’ lot and their house is now falling into that crack. They lived there since 1991. The same crack extended to the street and swallowed a car.
It probably won’t be long before additional cracks appear and my house either falls into those cracks, or lava bubbles up out of those cracks and consumes my house. I’m headed back again soon — hopefully while I can still get in to the house on the road — to get my library and furniture. Will I make it in time? We’ll see.
I’m fortunate in that I am insured and I also have another home I can return to, a tiny home I built a few years ago in Orchidland — explicitly as a lifeboat against life’s vicissitudes. It’s in a different lavashed than lower Puna, on the flanks of Mauna Loa rather than Kilauea. I’m hoping that Mauna Loa doesn’t start seriously rumbling along with Kilauea and take out my tiny home too.
These events are a major disruption of my plans, long-term and short-term, but I’ve learned over the years how to deal with such disruptions, since they seem to crop up in my life with some regularity. The best we can do is diversify as much as possible and (I hate to say it) go with the flow.
Art imitates life imitates art
A particularly intriguing aspect of these events for me personally is that I have been slowly writing a novel about the Big Island for almost five years now. Two characters in my novel live in Leilani Estates and — here’s the interesting part — a series of volcanic events happens in my novel in Leilani in a very similar way as actually happened in 2018. In my novel, a large cinder cone (pu’u) appears in the heart of Leilani. In real life, a large cinder cone has formed on Luana Street just a few blocks from where I placed it in my novel.
And in my novel, the pu’u south of Moku Street opens up later and spews lava downhill. That hasn’t happened yet. Please Pele, don’t take my imaginings as your inspiration anymore!
While tragic and highly disruptive to so many lives, including my own, we can’t help but be awed and even inspired by Pele’s recent kinetics and yet another demonstration of her might.
At the same time, I do recognize the obvious life lessons from these events. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is fixed. There is no foundation. We all live in an interconnected and interdependent web. There is freedom in that recognition. Disasters bring communities closer together and often bring out the best in people.
Thank you, Pele, for the strong reminders. Breathing with you.
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