Public access to cooled lava opening at transfer station

PAHOA, Hawaii » An area for viewing cooled lava will open in Pahoa on Wednesday, even as a breakout from Kilauea Volcano continued advancing toward a shopping center and prompted the closure of a gas station.

Public access at the Pahoa Recycling and Transfer Station, where lava oozed through a fence and onto asphalt in November, will be allowed from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. The access will be limited to the transfer station and nearby Apaa Street, where lava crossed the road in October. Apaa is a paved, two-lane road and the county has created a parking and traffic plan in anticipation of an influx of visitors.

Volunteer attendants will be on site to assist drivers and pedestrians sharing the road while buses will drop off passengers at the transfer station. Access will be closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day, Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira said.

The flow also crossed onto private property nearby, which will not be open to the public, he said.

Meanwhile, the active flow advanced about 275 yards overnight Monday on course to reach the area’s main shopping center, which has a gas station and a supermarket, in seven to 10 days. The lava is now about 1 mile from Pahoa Marketplace near the intersection of Highway 130 and Pahoa Village Road, Civil Defense officials said after an overflight Tuesday. The shopping center also contains a hardware store, pharmacy and auto repair shop.

The supermarket, one of the biggest stores in the center, began removing equipment on Tuesday and will shut down Thursday. Malama Market said in a statement it was encouraging customers to keep shopping until its doors close.

While no evacuations have been ordered, Malama Mart Gas N Go fuel station closed about 6 p.m. Tuesday. The station is operated by Malama Market staff and is co-owned by the Kalama Beach Corp. and Aloha Petroleum Ltd. Fuel will be removed from underground storage tanks.

The state Department of Health has installed three temporary monitors to measure air quality levels in the area. According to a news release, two monitors are located in Pahoa and one in Leilani Estates. Additional monitors may be installed as the lava flow continues. The monitoring data and advisories may be viewed online at health.hawaii.gov or airnow.gov.

The University of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology has developed a model to forecast lava flow smoke, which can be viewed online at weather.hawaii.edu/ vmap/smoke.

There’s still a great deal of uncertainty about when the lava might reach the center and what it could hit. The lava could smother one structure in the complex or cover them all, Oliveira said Tuesday.