With Mauna Loa erupting for the first time in nearly 40 years, I thought I’d ask readers about their first experience with the volcano.
I remember mine vividly. It was pouring rain when I was first there in 1973. I got off the bus, and the wind destroyed my umbrella instantly. It was a short walk to the designated viewing location.
I looked down into the circular Kilauea Caldera and saw lava bubbling and spattering 200 feet below. It was magical. Breathtaking.
I took several photos and, soaking wet, got back on the bus. When I developed the film and showed a roommate a week later, she gasped and pointed: “Pele!”
Part of the lava clearly looked like a woman’s body in profile, from her boots to her flowing hair. I hadn’t noticed until she brought it to my attention. Now, nearly 50 years later, I can’t not see it.
Awesome sight
Sam Wilson remembers seeing the volcano as a child. “On Dec. 17, 1959, my little brother and I were roughly awakened in the middle of the night and told to get into the car in a hurry. My father said we were going to see a volcanic eruption. Still in our pajamas, we fell asleep during the 50-minute drive to Kilauea Crater.
“When we parked, there was already a mass of people streaming toward an astonishing bright reddish glow. As we walked closer to the rim, we could see a fairly narrow fountain shooting up into the night about half a mile away.
“I felt the heat on my eyebrows, the hairs of which were crinkling and seemed ready to catch fire. I read later that the fountain that night reached 1,900 feet high. It was and still is the most awesome sight I have ever seen.”
Melted sneakers
Ken Fujii recalled an eruption of Mauna Loa during the summer of 1950. “School was out, and Mauna Loa erupted in early July. The first weekend, our family piled into our Ford and drove all the way past Volcano National Park to the area where the lava was crossing the highway.
“The eruption was from the Southwest Rift Zone, where the terrain is steep, so the lava there traveled at a rapid clip, much faster than the flows on the Northeast Rift Zone area, where the terrain is more gradual.
“We parked our car on the side of the road and walked a short distance to the brink of the lava flow. The edge was still hot but cool enough for us to climb up onto.
“What a spectacular view! It was nighttime, so the glowing molten rock made a beautiful sight as the river of red-hot rock streamed rapidly downhill.
“We could feel the intense heat from the lava radiating onto our faces, while the chilly night air cooled our backs.
“A lot of the children and teens in the crowd were making souvenir paperweights with the lava. We got a stick and dipped it into the molten lava, and brought up a soft glob of it, into which we stuck a coin.
“I had a 50-cent coin which I inserted into my dollop of lava, and the half-dollar immediately turned black from the sulfur reacting with the silver.
“But in the midst of our activity, someone shouted, ‘The lava is coming towards us! Run!’
“Uphill, about a hundred yards away, the lava had broken through the solid dike and was headed downhill toward us and our parked cars.
“We all rushed to our cars, and there was a mad scramble as all of them were facing the wrong way, and we all had to make quick U-turns to head away from the flow.
“It was a frightening and exciting few minutes,” Fujii says, “as 30-40 cars tried to escape immolation by the lava.
“Fortunately, no one got hurt that night. And as we drove away, my mom asked, ‘What’s that smell?’ I noticed that the soles of my Keds had melted as I stood on the hot lava flow and were now sticky, melted rubber.
“I ended up with two souvenirs of the 1950 Mauna Loa lava flow: My coin in the lava and my partially melted sneakers.”
Glass tinkling, cracking
Sharon Maekawa said, “I recall taking my students from Liholiho Elementary School on Oahu on a trip to Hawaii island. It was when Kilauea erupted in 1983. That eruption covered Queen’s Bath, Kalapana and the Wahaula Heiau, which was once used for sacrificial purposes.
“It was a cloudy day with light showers. We had stopped for lunch at the Wahaula Heiau Visitors Center, and after that a park ranger took us to a spot where we could walk to see the lava flow up close.”
The Pahoehoe lava flow was slowly creeping along, Maekawa says, turning black as it cooled and then crackled as another red blob of lava slowly emerged. “It sounded like delicate glass tinkling and cracking, which was in sharp contrast with the surrounding black masses of newly formed land.
“I never forgot the sight or sound of it until it was recently shown on the news by a reporter who was just as mesmerized by it as my students and I were.
“There was a spiritual aura in the air which apparently, my normally rambunctious students could sense, as they were unusually calm and quiet.”
Kalapana
Virginia Moore said, “In the 1980s I was on leave from teaching in Virginia to get my master’s degree in education at UH Manoa. I went to the Big Island with my nephew, who lived on Oahu.
“This was when lava flowed into the seaside town of Kalapana and destroyed it. Kalapana was world famous for its black-sand beach. I sat on the beach and watched the lava enter the sea.
“I also saw palm trees burning. I made a video for my third graders back in Virginia, and told them what they were witnessing was the birth of the earth!
“Daytime viewing was beautiful and enthralling. Staying until nighttime augmented the experience exponentially! Wow! What a sight! It was unforgettable!”
Volcano viewing
Joyce McCauley said, “In 1973 my New Yorker husband and I returned to Honolulu to live. We had great next-door neighbors in New York City who decided to come visit us with their three boys, since Kilauea had just started erupting and they felt it would be a great experience for them.
“We spent a long weekend on the Big Island to see the eruption. We parked the car at the designated area and hiked over the cooled lava beds to a wooden lookout structure that was provided by the Park Service for viewing, maybe about a half a mile in. Several other visitors were also there.
“We watched as lava spewed out of the fissure, all of us in awe, being maybe 100 yards away, hot enough to have to duck behind the wall of the structure periodically. The heat felt like standing in front of a smelter furnace at 1,000 degrees.
“After being there for almost an hour, the rangers came to tell all of us on the viewing stand that the flow path had shifted and to evacuate quickly.
“We were ushered back over the lumpy lava bed to our parked cars. It took us maybe 15 minutes. With the kids we couldn’t go much faster.
“Finally, we got back to the car, piled in, and as we turned it around and started leaving, we looked back at the fountain and viewing stand. It suddenly burst into flames and burned down.
“I guess Madam Pele did not want us so close!”
Readers, what was your first experience with the volcano like?
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “Companies We Keep” books. Send your comments or suggestions to Sigall@ Yahoo.com.
