PAHOA, Hawaii >>

The Puna district is huge. It’s almost the size of Oahu, 500 square miles, yet it feels like a small town.

The Pahoa village in Puna has become the hub of activity surrounding the lava response and evacuations. It has become the place to wait.

There isn’t much to do in the long hours and days for those who wait to see if lava will claim their homes in Leilani Estates or Lanipuna or any of the areas where lava has been pushing up through fissures and covering all in its path.

For those who have already lost their homes, there’s plenty to do, so many tasks involved in starting all over.

But for those waiting every day to see whether the lava will spare their property, the anxiety hangs in the air, dark and acrid.

Pahoa is a sweet little town with a main street of wooden buildings that date to the early 1900s — the largest concentration of old buildings in Hawaii. Along the raised wooden sidewalk, there are cute boutiques with clever names, bursts of creativity like a sidewalk crack painted to look like a curling vine and big murals depicting Pele. Nobody ever forgot she was near.

In the Recovery Information Assistance Center in Pahoa, volunteers and agencies try to help with the waiting. Recovery can’t really start until the damage is over, and there is no end in sight. Displaced residents can get assistance, but oftentimes their needs can’t easily be met.

“It goes deep,” said Dennis Kauka, aide to the mayor’s executive assistant. Where do you start when you’re faced with losing everything?

Shoshannah Ruwethin, captain with the Salvation Army in Hilo, sat ready to listen to anybody who came her way.

“One man said he had a place to stay, but he didn’t want to leave his neighbors,” Ruwethin said. “He said, ‘I want to be here for them. We’re in this together,’ so he slept in his car.”

The Salvation Army, with a staff of six in Hilo plus volunteers and retired pastors, is providing clothing vouchers, drinking water and emotional care and is coordinating meals for people in the evacuation shelters, providing breakfast, lunch and dinner to hundreds of people each day. The food has to be prepared in certified kitchens, so different restaurants and commercial facilities on the island have taken turns feeding the people while The Salvation Army helps to coordinate and serve.

“One person from Oahu called and made a donation to pay for one meal for everyone,” Ruwethin said. That kind of help is particularly useful.

There are moments of grace that break through the pain of waiting.

One woman came in asking for help to move her furniture out of her house before the lava reached her doorstep. She had a little Honda and was having to make so many trips out of Leilani Estates.

The same day, the owner of a construction company walked in the door and said he had three flatbed trucks ready to help anyone needing to evacuate. Things like that happen all the time.

But mostly it is about biding time to see when and how this will end, and how much each person will have left when it’s over.

Willie Nunn, coordinating officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told residents Monday night, “I am not going to promise to make you whole, but I promise you we will be here for the long run and we will be here to help.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.