Kilauea Quakes

Eruptions in Hawaii

For three days, the earth shook around the remote High Sierra town of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., as more than 1,000 tremors struck. Geologists watched closely for evidence of a long-predicted eruption, but the local volcanoes behaved. Not so some 2,500 miles to the west, where Madam Pele (pronounced Pay-lay), the legendary goddess of Hawaiian volcanoes, was in full and fiery glory. After 48 hours of intermittent though spectacular spits and smolderings, Kilauea volcano, in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the island of Hawaii, erupted in a nocturnal display of geothermal pyrotechnics that shot fire fountains as high as 500 ft. in the air. Hot red viscous lava spewed repeatedly from one 270-ft.-long fissure in the earth, flowed several hundred yards and then disappeared into another huge crack.

The eruption broke out several miles from the volcano's crater, mowing down and burning an ohia-lehua tree forest growing over what is known as the East Rift Zone, an underground fault. During previous eruptions, the rift was the conduit for the deadly lava that wiped out whole villages on "the Big Island," as Hawaii is known locally. Although nearly all of the lava was confined to the park, at week's end the flow was threatening a number of private homes.

But there were no injuries; rangers in the park are skilled at shielding a gawking public from harm. Kilauea's performance last week far outclassed two 24-hour eruptions last year. The natural fireworks were so spectacular that at least one commercial airline pilot veered off his normal flight path to give passengers a bird's-eye view of the show below. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.