Things have shown no signs of settling down around the Kilauea volcano on the big island of Hawaii, and now experts are worried that the presence of blue flames could be a sign of more ominous things to come. Adding to their fears is the concern that Hawaii’s last remaining open highway could be blocked if new fissures open. If that happens, approximately 1,000 people would have to be helicoptered to safety.
USGS From CBS News: “It’s the first time, maybe the second time I’ve seen the blue flames thing. It’s very dramatic, very eerie,” geophysicist Jim Kauahikaua said. But why have these flamed popped up? Here are more on the blue flames from National Geographic:
USGS “They’re not a common phenomenon,” says volcanologist Janine Krippner. “The only other place I know of it is in Indonesia.” At the Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia, blue flames are a more common sight. There, the phenomenon is caused by sulfuric gases ignited by hot vents. Blue flames have also been documented at the Dallol volcano in Ethiopia, where they are created by sulfur dust in the region’s soil. The Kilauea eruption may be glowing blue in part because lava is entering developed areas where roads paved over the vegetation. Under normal conditions, plant breakdown produces methane that is gradually released into the air. Scientists weighed in on what causes these blue flames to emerge. Krippner thinks the paved roads could be acting as a sort of cap over the methane, causing it to build up in high concentrations. When it escapes through cracks in the inundated roads, it’s suddenly exposed to heat and oxygen, and the gas ignites.
USGS “The flames look so familiar because, despite the dramatic setting, it’s exactly like the flickers of blue in a campfire,” says geologist Mika McKinnon. Lava trapping vegetation in forested areas could produce methane blasts “capable of propelling boulder-sized rocks and other debris into the air,” according to a USGS Facebook post. “These explosions are unpredictable, and the only way to avoid them is to avoid the lava flows.” Experts say that the blue flames are a cause for concern because they indicate the presence of methane gas. Methane is a by product of lava burning plants and trees, and scientists warn that it could trigger explosions if ignited while trapped underground. Avoiding lava flows in the area around Kilauea, however, is something that’s proven to be easier said than done as lava forced a new wave of evacuations on the eastern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island. National Guard Troopers, police, and firefighters escorted the evacuees to safety just hours before the lava blocked the road and completely cut off access to the area. Here’s more from Yahoo News:
Kilauea - USGS YouTube A stream of lava as wide as three football fields flowed over a highway near a junction at Kapoho, a seaside community of rebuilt after a destructive eruption of Kilauea in 1960. The lava flow left Kapoho and the adjacent development of Vacationland cut off from the rest of the island by road, according to the Hawaii County Civil Defense agency. Also, lava destroyed a freshwater lake, boiling away all of the water in it, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported late Saturday, local time. Nobody ever expected to see anything like what’s depicted in the arial photographs on the next page. “Lava entered Green Lake within Kapoho Crater, producing a large steam plume … A Hawaiian County Fire Department overflight reported that the lava filled the lake and apparently evaporated all the water,” the report said. Authorities since Wednesday had been urging residents of the area to leave before lava spewing from a volcanic fissure at the eastern foot of Kilauea reached the area.
USGS The final phase of the evacuation was carried out late on Friday and early Saturday by fire and police department personnel, with help from the Hawaii National Guard and public works teams, county civil defense spokeswoman Janet Snyder told Reuters by email. An estimated 500 people live in the Kapoho area, but Snyder said it was not immediately clear how many residents, if any, chose to stay behind. Another 2,000 people have already been evacuated from Leilani Estates, an area further west where dozens of homes have been devoured or cut off by rivers of lava streaming over the landscape since May 3. For those whose homes have been unscathed, the prolonged strain of uncertainty has grown increasingly difficult.
USGS “We’re waiting for Pele to make the decision,” said Steve Kirkpatrick, a retired mailman and 14-year resident of Leilani Estates, referring to the volcano goddess of Hawaiian myth. His home was still intact but in harm’s way. “You go for three weeks and you think everything is fine, and then you can still lose your house,” Kirkpatrick told Reuters as he and his wife, Kathy, ventured back to their community to help friends move out. “As the lava expands, so has the anxiety,” she said, the low, jet-like sound of lava spouting from the ground audible in the distance. Lava was not the only challenge posed by the eruption. Toxic sulfur dioxide gas emissions have created an additional hazard. So too have airborne volcanic glass fibers, called “Pele’s hair,” wispy strands produced by lava fountains and carried aloft by the wind.
USGS One resident, Nancy Avery, said the glass strands hurt like paper cuts, slicing into her fingers and feet, toes exposed because she wore only sandals. She tried to pick up a strand but, “It just kind of melted into my skin and cut me. It’s so sharp, it feels like the glass is still in there.” The lava itself, extruded from about two dozen fissures that opened on the slope of Kilauea’s “eastern rift zone” earlier this month, has also knocked out telephone and power lines and forced the shutdown of a geothermal energy plant. Lava burned two buildings at the plant, a substation and a warehouse that stored a drilling rig, officials said. The latest upheaval of Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, comes on the heels of an eruption cycle that began in 1983 and continued almost nonstop for 35 years, destroying more than 200 dwellings and other structures. The current activity has been accompanied for weeks by daily explosions of gas and volcanic rock from Kilauea’s summit crater as well as earthquakes.
USGS _But the summit has quieted down over the past few days, as tons of rubble shaken loose from the interior walls of the crater have fallen into the void and plugged up the bottom of the vent. _ Scientists are unsure whether the blockage will eventually end eruptions at the summit or lead to a buildup of pressure that could cause a much bigger explosion.
USGS The pressure and magna build up could indeed be a sign of things slowing down, but with recent developments scientists are still on edge. On Saturday, Kilauea recorded over 500 earthquakes! This is the most ever recorded in a 24 hour period on Hawaii’s Big Island. From HawaiiNewsNow.com: “What is happening here is that this is an explosion that’s actually giving rise to this earthquake,” said Westen Thelen, a United States Geological Survey seismologist. “It does measure a 5.5, but as it turns out, that energy is being released so slowly that for the most part it doesn’t feel like a standard magnitude 5.5 earthquake would.”
USGS Officials say that the afternoon explosion happened in a shallow part of the crust near Kilauea, right up next to the service. Thelen says that despite its magnitude, only people in the area of the volcano would have felt any tremors. For the most part, if you have a regular 5.5 magnitude earthquake on the Big Island, everyone on the island feels it, everyone on Maui feels it, (even) a few people on Oahu feel it," Thelen said. As of 11 a.m. Sunday, officials said 500 smaller earthquakes were recorded near the summit within the last day — it’s the most earthquakes recorded in a 24-hour period on Hawaii Island. Satellite imagery also showed drastic changes happening at the Halemaumau Crater on Sunday morning.
USGS Scientists say cracks formed along the rim of the crater indicating a large portion occurred on the western rim had begun to fall in. “The west side of Halemaumau is clearly unstable, and it is possible that rockfalls and continued slumping will occur in the future,” USGS said. Last month, when the eruption started, a large 6.9 quake rattled homes — and residents. Scientists say the earthquakes are directly tied to volcanic activity as it releases pressure from magma moving underground. “The south side of the island is slipping toward the ocean to relieve the added stress caused by the injection of magma into the volcano,” Michael Garcia, a geology and geophysics professor from the University of Hawaii said on Hawaii News Now Sunrise.