POHOIKI, Hawaii island >> The long, slow recovery from the East Rift eruption that destroyed most of Kapoho last year took a major step forward Wednesday with the official reopening of Highway 132, a link between Pahoa village and hundreds of properties that were isolated or covered by lava.

Slightly more than 3 miles of the highway was buried by lava in the eruption that began on May 3, 2018. That flow also destroyed more than 700 homes in the Leilani Estates and Kapoho areas, and covered more than 6,000 acres of land in Lower Puna with lava. It buried or blocked access to more than 1,600 acres of farmland.

Leila Kealoha, who was among those displaced by the eruption, offered up a cleansing prayer and a pule or blessing for protection as the new two-lane roadway opened just before noon on Wednesday, and a line of cars and trucks passed over the fresh asphalt for the first time, heading toward the Puna coast.

“This is the first step at healing for our community,” said Shannon “Smiley” Burrows, who lost her home in the flow along with two Kapoho homes that belonged to her sons. “There are a lot of people that really needed this. We had initially said a road to recovery begins with a road, and it’s absolutely true.”

“It’s the first road we are able to recover. There’s many more roads,” she added.

Rebuilding this particular road was a challenge. Enormous quantities of lava flowed in a molten river along or across the roadway on its way to the coastline, and rebuilding required excavation of 109,000 cubic yards of lava rock, some of which was so hard it damaged the excavation equipment.

As construction crews stripped away the top layers of cooled lava closest to the ocean and the former site of old Kapoho village, they sometimes encountered lava that was still heated to more than 700 degrees, according to the Hawaii County Department of Public Works.

When that happened, the crews were forced to wait while the lava cooled before they could continue work. The $6.5 million project was supposed to be completed on Oct. 5 to qualify for full reimbursement by the Federal Highway Administration, but federal officials granted the county a three-month extension to cope with the super-heated lava.

Olivia Cockcroft, a 31-year resident of the Kapoho subdivision of Vacationland, was among about 75 people who gathered for Wednesday’s road reopening. When she moved to a 5-acre agricultural lot there in 1987, there was no power and no water, but it was home.

“I’m living in another place, and it doesn’t cut it,” she said. Her new home in Puna is loud and “crowded.” The neighbors have pit bulls and fighting cocks, and “I had no idea the rest of the world lives like this.”

Cockcroft needs more roadway to be cleared before she can access her land, but she wants to return, and she doesn’t much care if she once again must do without power or water.

Debra Smith, a Kapoho resident who lost her house in the lava flow but bought another from a neighbor in Vacationland, said Kapoho owners want to return “because we love it out there.”

“We have fruit trees, we have greenhouses, we have land that we can use,” she said. She also needs to have more road cleared before she can return, she said, but “we are stubborn.”

“It’s the eastern point, there’s this essence where the sun comes up first,” said Burrows. “It’s not like anywhere else on the island. There’s just this purity, and it’s still there. It’s almost more purified in my mind.”

There is also a close bond between the former Kapoho residents, with one after another interrupting Burrows’ musings at the road reopening to greet and hug her. “It has really strengthened the community, we all know each other now,” she said.

Burrows owns the landmark property known locally as Green Lake or Puu Kapoho, but so far she has only been able to visit her land by air. With the opening of the restored Highway 132, she still needs to put in some sort of driveway to access her property and rebuild, “but it’s the first step to getting home. It’s closer.”

Some former Kapoho residents worry the county may not want to reinvest additional federal disaster recovery funds in Lava Zones 1 and 2, because those areas including Kapoho are at the highest risk for another flow. But Burrows said that money should be spent in the communities that were damaged.

“As far as the taxpaying citizens of the actual disaster area, we’re owed that,” said Burrows, 49. “That’s money that belongs to the disaster victims.”