Hawaii homes crushed by river of lava

Press, 4 July 1983, Page 10

Hawaii homes crushed by river of lava

NZPA Honolulu A four-metre high flow of lava crept through a sparsely populated area in Hawaii at the week-end, destroying two houses and threatening seven more, said officials. “There are a few homes directly below the flow now and they are in a very precarious position,” said Bruce" Butts, a spokesman for Hawaii County Civil Defence.

Two homes in the Royal Gardens subdivision, which had been evacuated hours earlier, were crushed by the slowly advancing lava,

bringing to 10 the number of homes in the housing area to be destroyed since Kilauea Volcano erupted on January 3. The latest phase of the activity began on Thursday, sending a river of lava on a skm course down Kilauea’s slopes toward the subdivision. The leading edge of the flow was about 73 metres wide and four metres high as it moved into the subdivision, stalling at times and then surging ahead at a walking pace. The flow was being fed by the volcano’s east rift area where lava fountains were

spewing out of the top of a cinder vent. Meanwhile, in Jakarta about 2500 people have been evacuated from villages endangered by the eruption of a dormant volcano in the North Moluccan Islands, the official news agency Antara reports. No casualties were reported when Gamkunoro Volcano on Halmahera Island, about 2400 km from Jakarta, erupted on June 28, spewing lava, smoke and debris. Authorities in the provincial capital of Ambon said that the residents of four villages had been evacuated as a precaution.