He highlighted petroleum contamination linked to Navy bases on Hawaii, as well as the environmental destruction caused by tourism and the November spill of “forever chemicals” at Hawaii’s Red Hill Naval Facility Without volcanoes, there would be no Hawaii.Īnd rather than trying to interrupt natural phenomena like lava flows, he suggested that humans should be more mindful of their own impact on Hawaii. He noted that Hawaii itself was created as a result of volcanic eruptions. “Like Mauna Loa, Hawaiian sovereignty is seen as something that needs to be contained that needs to be suppressed,” Maile told CNN. It may be destructive, but it creates life to stand on for generations to come.” “This is true too for Hawaiian sovereignty. Settler society sees her as a destructive threat for containment,” Maile wrote on Twitter. “Mauna Loa is erupting on Lā Kūʻokoʻa, Hawaiian Independence Day. The volcano erupted on November 28th, Hawaiian Independence Day, which commemorates the signing of the Anglo-Franco Proclamation of 1843 which recognized Hawaii as a sovereign kingdom. Uahikea Maile, an assistant professor of indigenous politics at the University of Toronto, echoed this sentiment.įor Maile, the eruption of Mauna Loa is especially resonant because of its timing. “I think there’s a fair amount of sentiment in Hawaii that you don’t mess with Pele,” he said, referring to the Hawaiian goddess of fire. Segall also said that increasingly, scientists and residents of Hawaii alike view the lava flow as a natural phenomenon – not something that needs to be disrupted. Lava flow from Mauna Loa is about 2.7 miles from the highway Hundreds of people in their cars lined Saddle Road, which connects the east and west sides of the island, as lava flowed down the side of Mauna Loa and could be seen fountaining into the air on Wednesday. Massive amounts of seawater were sprayed onto the lava to cool it down, which helped prevent the lava from closing off the island’s vital harbor.Ī man talks on a phone in his car alongside Saddle Road as the Mauna Loa volcano erupts Wednesday, Nov. In 1973, for instance, the Eldfell volcanic eruption triggered a months-long crisis for the small Iceland island of Heimaey. Some efforts to combat volcano flows have succeeded despite the odds. The army dropped two 600-pound bombs, but they missed their target and had minimal effect on the lava flows. In the past decades, workers have used bulldozers to construct huge earthen walls to redirect after eruptions like that of Mount Etna in Sicily.Īnd in 1935, Thomas Jaggar, founder of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, called on the US Army Air Corps to bomb the source of lava flowing from Mauna Loa, which was headed towards the Wailuku River, according to the U.S. “The history is not successful,” Segall said. It’s hard to say at this point whether the lava will even reach the highway, Segall explained.Īdditionally, although different countries have tried in the past to redirect their flows, their efforts have mostly been expensive failures. Lava’s “tendency to flow is extremely temperature-sensitive,” Paul Segall, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University who researches earthquakes and volcanoes, told CNN. This is part of the problem with attempts to redirect the lava flow: lava is unpredictable, and it’s hard to tell where it might go next. Inouye Highway,” wrote the agency in its update. “There are many variables at play and both the direction and timing of flow advances are expected to change over periods of hours to days, making it difficult to estimate when or if the flow will impact Daniel K. Predicting if, or when, the lava might hit the highway, which connects the west and east of the island, is difficult. It had been moving about 40 feet per hour over the last 24 hours, the agency said. Inouye Highway, according to an alert from the US Geological Survey. Marco Garcia/APĪ guide to those volcanic terms: Pele's hair, caldera, volcanic ash - learn what they meanĪs of Saturday afternoon, the lava was just 2.5 miles from the Daniel K. Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, erupted Monday for the first time in 38 years. A river of lava flows down from Mauna Loa, Monday, Nov.
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