2 little Big Isle earthquakes join area’s mix of lava, snow
In this thermal image taken Tuesday, white and yellow pixels show areas of active breakouts. Although the leading tip of the flow has stalled, the thermal image shows that active breakouts are present a short distance upslope of the stalled tip.
HILO » Mother Nature rattled Hawaii island with a pair of small earthquakes Monday as lava breakouts continued upslope from the stalled flow front in Puna and scores of Hawaii Electric Light Co. customers remained without power in the aftermath of an intense storm over the weekend.
The Kilauea Volcano lava flow, which was on course to hit the Pahoa Marketplace on Christmas Eve before stalling, remains about 580 yards from the complex and 880 yards from Highway 130 and Pahoa Village Road, the area’s main throughway.
Hawaii County Civil Defense officials are now watching breakout flows about 1 to 1.5 miles upslope of the shopping area.
Those breakouts advanced about 150 yards between Monday and Tuesday morning. In addition, officials noted some surface activity at a breakout about 200 yards above the flow front.
Two small earthquakes were recorded Monday.
The first temblor, with an initial magnitude of 3.2, struck shortly after 3 a.m., about 7 miles west-southwest of Waikoloa, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
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The second, a magnitude-3.1 quake, struck at 10:09 p.m. about 10 miles northeast of Ocean View.
Meanwhile, by Tuesday, electrical power had been restored to all but about 120 of an estimated 46,000 HELCO customers affected by outages touched off by a winter storm that toppled trees and struck power lines Friday and Saturday.
Hawaii Electric Light Co. spokeswoman Rhea Lee said that most of the affected customers were without power for a short period of time. On Monday, HELCO announced there were still about 360 customers without power.
"We’re hoping to have everyone up and running by tomorrow (Wednesday)," Lee said.
Keith Okamoto, deputy manager of the Hawaii County Department of Water Supply, said the storm left 2,000 customers in the island’s north town of Kohala without water for a period of time. It also affected about 600 customers in Waimea along with 100 customers in Waiohinu and South Point.
Okamoto said many residents had access to water by Monday and that the water problems were caused by power failures.
Also, on Saturday a cold front delivered a record-low temperature of 59 degrees to Hilo and blizzard conditions to the island’s summits. The National Weather Service estimated Mauna Kea’s summit received between 6 inches and a foot of snow along with heavy wind.
