20-year-old student describes what it’s like to be struck by Kilauea lava bomb on Hawaii island

Moments before 20-year-old Jessica Tilton was struck July 16 by a lava bomb that broke multiple bones in her body, she heard an explosion and saw a big cloud that kept coming toward the tour boat she was on.

“I turned in to, like, cover my little sister,” the Washington, Ill., visitor said from her Honolulu hospital bed. “It was coming down and I thought I was encased in lava, and everything just went black. You didn’t see anything. You just felt like you were suffocating, and I thought I was dying.”

Tilton recalls saying a prayer. “After everything kind of cleared up and I realized I wasn’t dead, I kept screaming, ‘My legs hurt.’ My leg hurt really bad.”

She clutched one of her favorite stuffed animals, a smiling turtle, as she spoke publicly for the first time since the incident. Her parents, Rob and Teresa Tilton, both 49, were by her side at The Queen’s Medical Center.

Jessica was among 23 passengers injured but the only one with serious injuries. She has had two surgeries for a broken left femur. Her pelvis and sacrum were broken in multiple places, and her shinbone was fractured.

The lava bomb that struck her left torso was a large, “still glowing” rock, resulting in a large hematoma that she still feels every day, she said.

Her father said the “fairly large boulder” was 2 feet in diameter, unlike the 1-foot-diameter boulder that ruptured the metal roof of the boat and landed farther away from them.

A jacket or blanket was placed over the still-hot lava bomb, and a crew member threw it overboard, he said. “They were concerned about hot lava on the boat,” he said.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources and other passengers initially reported that the smaller lava bomb hit her.

Tilton was seated closest to the railing on the left side of the boat. Sitting next to her were her 15-year-old twin sisters, Olivia and Ashley, with their father sitting nearest the aisle.

The lava bomb came over the side of the boat, struck a railing, leaving a dent, then “kind of landed in her seat, hit her and pushed her aside,” more of a “glancing blow,” Rob Tilton said.

The Lava Ocean Tours vessel, Hot Spot, was the only tour boat to get as close as it did to the lava flow, witnesses said. Fire officials said it was about 200 yards from the shoreline.

The Coast Guard had shortened the distance boats were allowed to approach the lava to 50 meters from 100 meters a week earlier, but after the accident reinstated a 300-meter distance from the lava’s ocean entry.

Jessica Tilton said the lava tour boat was uncomfortably close to the ocean entry of lava in Kapoho.

“It looked like you would zoom in on a camera,” she said. “It looked cool, but it was too close for comfort.”

The 20-year-old choked up as she expressed gratitude for two surgeons and an emergency medical technician who came forward to help and kept her positive.

A French surgeon, she said, stayed with her during the hour-and-15-minute boat ride over rough waters back to Hilo. “He was seriously the nicest man alive. He stayed with me the entire boat ride just to make sure I was going to make it. … I just wish I could tell him thank you again.”

During the agonizingly long ride back, she thought of her mother who, prone to seasickness, stayed back at the hotel.

“What is she going to say when she gets this phone call? Are my organs OK? … Am I going to survive? It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I was so concerned that maybe these were going to be the last moments with my family.”

The family was on the second-to-last day of a vacation celebrating the parents’ 25th wedding anniversary.

Her mother, Teresa Tilton, said, “I feel guilty I wasn’t there, especially for my other two. They didn’t have their mom there. There was a lady on the boat who was acting like a mom for them, and I’m very grateful she was there. I feel guilty I wasn’t there to comfort everybody.”

Jessica said every day is a challenge, and her current goal is just to sit up long enough to transfer to a wheelchair without too much pain.

Her hope is to return to a normal life, school and dance. She is studying premed at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and would have been a junior this fall.

Her eyes lit up as she expressed her joy for contemporary and lyrical jazz dance and coaching color guard for a marching band.

Her doctors tell her she will be able to recover but that it will take time.

“I keep thinking in my mind, ‘I can get through this,’” she said.

She said she’s learned “a lot of doctors don’t know how to talk to patients,” and that “made me realize how to talk to patients” when she becomes a doctor.

Her parents plan to remain in Hawaii until she is able to tolerate a flight home. They are thankful for the outpouring of support, including from the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii, hotel and rental car company.

The family’s attorney, Rick Fried, said he is investigating Lava Ocean Tours operator Shane Turpin, and hopes for anyone who witnessed the event to contact him.

Turpin did not reply to a Star-Advertiser email by press time.

The tour company has settled at least three civil cases filed by passengers who alleged serious injuries due to speeding over rough waters, being thrown into the air and disregard for safety.