The immediate threat is over, but an active field of lava on the edges of Pahoa town means that the wait has begun to see what the lava will do next — and when.
It could take weeks, months, years and even decades before the so-called June 27 lava breakout from an eruption that started 32 years ago out of Kilauea Volcano becomes a danger again and starts taking out more homes, buildings and roads.
"There’s no indication that this eruption is going to stop," said Hawaii County Civil Defense Administrator Darryl Oliveira. "We could be looking at the next multidecade event unfolding."
And so an uneasy mood has settled across Pahoa, where lava first crossed Apaa Street in October.
After burning a circuitous, 13.5-mile route through the Puna District, the river of 2,100-degree lava destroyed a house, overran a Buddhist cemetery, claimed a farmer’s shed, set a stack of tires on fire and ignited an open-air cattle shelter.
Then it inexplicably stalled just 480 feet from Pahoa Village Road, Pahoa’s main street; 400 yards from Pahoa Marketplace, a critical center of commerce; and about 600 yards from the police and fire stations.
But little fingers of lava continue to bubble out behind the original front edge of the flow, meaning lava continues to flow from Kilauea’s Puu Oo vent.
State Sen. Russell Ruderman (D, Puna) owns the Island Naturals food store in the heart of Pahoa and estimates that 10 percent to 15 percent of lower Puna residents — mostly in the Hawaiian Beaches and Hawaiian Shores subdivisions — moved away in the last few months, leaving roughly 8,500 to 10,000 people behind.
But an unknown number of homeowners who might like to join them can’t because the threat of lava makes it impossible for buyers to get homeowner’s insurance, which Ruderman hopes to change through legislation this session.
"A lot of people felt they had to move despite the great loss to their financial situation," Ruderman said. "There are some empty houses, but it doesn’t feel like a ghost town."
County officials shut down their lava command center, and on Feb. 6, Hawaii National Guard troops went home. But the county continues daily flights along the path of the flow, and scientists from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory add their own weekly flight to monitor any threats.
"A lot can change in 24 hours, and we don’t want to miss something that could put the community at risk," Oliveira said.
The scaled-back pace represents "the new normal," Oliveira said. "I’m prepared — and our office is prepared — for a long-standing mission with this."
Asked how long the residents of Pahoa should remain on guard, Coco Pierson, 71, said, "Forever."
"This so-called respite we’re having right now is totally irrelevant and meaningless compared to what Mother Nature wants to do," Pierson said.
Pierson only has to look back at what happened in Kalapana 11 miles away, when slow-marching lava from the same flow threatened his two-story home in the Royal Gardens subdivision.
After the eruption began in January 1983, most of Pierson’s neighbors moved away.
But Pierson remained until 1989 as a river of lava stopped and started, threatened and retreated. In 2009 lava finally overran Pierson’s home, a free-standing garage and separate bathhouse.
"From 1983, when the lava first erupted, my house continued to live dangerously," Pierson said. "All my neighbors were gone and the streets were destroyed, and the lava continued to be a threat."
Asked how he lived with the thought that he could lose the house he loved any day, Pierson said he simply accepted that he has no say in what Mother Nature does — just like the people of Pahoa should do.
"I knew I had no control whatsoever in determining the outcome," Pierson said. "So I got on with life. If you learn to become oblivious to the threat, every day is a beautiful day."
Piilani Kaawaloa hears the fear and frustration voiced by her Pahoa neighbors. But she, too, says residents have to look at the long geological record to put living on an island with an active volcano in their backyard in perspective.
"There’s a lot of unhappiness," said Kaawaloa, 50, "but families that have been here for generations are saying, ‘Watch. Watch and learn.’"
Kaawaloa spends time in her family homes in Kalapana and Pahoa, and grew up in Kalapana under the constant threat of being overrun by lava.
"We’ve been through a lot," Kaawaloa said. "It’s a way of life."
When lava first crossed into Pahoa in October, a persistent CNN reporter from the mainland repeatedly asked county officials and volcano geologists when the eruption would stop.
After three days of addressing the same question, Frank Trusdell, a geologist with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, finally offered a long-range perspective:
"On Mauna Loa," Trusdell said, the geological record shows that "there was a period where lava flows lasted five centuries."
The reporter stopped asking the question.
The possibility that Pahoa could suffer the same fate as Kalapana is still hard for people in Pahoa to accept, Ruderman said.
"For 30 years we lived with the idea that lava flows south toward Kalapana — that’s just the way the lava goes," said Ruderman, the state senator. "Two years ago, if you said that Pahoa would be threatened by lava, it would have been hard to conceive. We’re a 200-year-old town that had never been impacted by lava, even though we’re downhill of a volcano. So the situation that lava is threatening Pahoa is still a little too new for people to have that perspective. The fact that we could live with it for generations? There’s a truth to it, but I don’t think we’ve accepted it psychologically."
Since the immediate threat to Pahoa subsided in December, Ruderman said, the mood among Pahoa residents has clearly changed.
"It’s a different kind of stress than anything I can think of," he said. "This is not a disaster where something terrible happens and you pick up the pieces. This is slow-motion dread."
