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Pu'u O'o is all pau for now

The big news around here is being referred to by geologists as "Episode 56." Last Sunday, Kilauea summit began to do a little shaking. (Kilauea is the mountain from which the current volcanic eruption is spewing.) Apparently, they experienced some 200 or so small earthquakes, one after another, starting at about 2:30 a.m. and lasting all day. I say "they" because we didn't experience a thing. We're very close to Volcanoes National Park, where all the shaking occured, so the quakes must have been tiny. We always feel the bigger ones. Anyway, scientists and park officials felt something was up, so they evacuated all the campers from the park and closed it. It's the first time the park has been closed in a decade. Pu'u O'o, the vent from which the lava has flowed for the past 10 years all the way to the ocean, had stopped. The crater floor and edges began to collapse. In the photo above you can see that what was once a circular crater has sprouted what scientists here have officially dubbed "rabbit ears." The lava is no longer making it's way to the sea along it's traditional pathways. You'd think if the lava had stopped, there would be no need to close the park. Geologists seemed to know, however, that while the lava was no longer flowing from Pu'u O'o, it didn't just disappear. It was underground, looking for a new path, a new place to surface. The quakes had moved all that rock around a bit, shifting the lava's direction. It wasn't long before the scientists were proven right. The flowing lava soon found a fissure in the rainforest, some four miles away from the Pu'u O'o vent. (See the photo on the right, above.) It came slowly out, flowing for a short distance before stopping. It burned 7,000 acres of native rainforest. Actually, it was a double whammy for the foliage in the forest; a combination of heat and sulfur gas. Luckily, this was still within the park boundary, so no people were hurt or structures burned. Officials are monitoring the situation closely. While geologists know quite a lot about Kilauea, Madam Pele can be very hard to predict. (For those unfamiliar with Pele, she is the goddess of the volcano.)
So that's been the excitement around here. The park is now fully opened, but tourists are bummed that they can't see the red lava pouring into the ocean, either from ground level or from the sky. As recently as two weeks ago, I heard one visitor say he saw lava "sloshing around" inside the crater (Pu'u O'o) from a helicopter. There is no sloshing now.
Today, we're headed down to Pahoa for some Mexican food. Maybe we'll stop at the Maku'u market to pick up some fresh produce. And maybe, just maybe, we'll spot some Punatics in their adopted habitat. If we don't see them, I'm sure we'll smell them.
A hui hou. Aloha.

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