Year after blast, Hawaii residents lament volcano’s wrath
PAHOA, Hawaii — A year after a volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island rained lava and gases in one of its largest and most destructive eruptions in recorded history, people who lost their homes and farms in the disaster are still struggling to return to their cherished island way of life.
More than 700 homes were destroyed in the historic eruption, and most people will never move back to their land.
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Over four months, Kilauea spewed enough lava to fill 320,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, burying an area more than half the size of Manhattan in up to 80 feet of now-hardened lava. The molten rock reduced landmarks, streets and neighborhoods to a vast field of blackened boulders and volcanic shard.
But the disaster, which county officials estimate will cost about $800 million to recover from, affected more than just the people and places in the lava’s path. Dozens of nearby homes that were spared still sit empty, either cut off by surrounding flows, damaged by airborne debris or downwind of cracks that continue to spew toxic gases.
Big Island Mayor Harry Kim lost a home in the eruption and says people are just beginning to come to terms with the devastation.
“We as human beings wish for normal to come back,” Kim said. “In a volcanic eruption, everything you know is no longer there.”
Among those whose lives were forever changed are Tisha Montoya and her family, who lived off the grid on several acres down from where the eruption began.
They had a large house and several cabins, along with greenhouses, pavilions and animal pastures. Montoya harvested different types of exotic fruit and had a pineapple garden, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits and Guinea pigs.
On May 4, the day after the eruption started, she evacuated when a 6.9-magnitude earthquake jolted the family’s home. Lava was pouring from new cracks in the nearby Leilani Estates neighborhood, and toxic gases filled the air.
Her father, Edwin Montoya, stayed behind to care for the animals. He hoped the entire family would soon be able to return.
Edwin’s children begged him to leave as the lava crept toward their property over the coming weeks. But he was committed to saving the animals, and he was prepared to die doing it.
“If it blows its top and I’m there at the time, I’m 76 years old, I’ve lived a good life, and if I have to go, I want to go,” Edwin Montoya told the Associated Press last May. “I love Hawaii, and this is where I want to stay for the rest of my days.”
As the lava neared, Edwin’s focus turned from taking care of the animals to evacuating them. He left the day before a river of lava arrived and cut the farm in half. The molten rock eventually took nearly all the structures, including the home and all but one small chicken coop that Edwin built.
Lava stopped flowing the first week of September. Edwin died less than a week later.
All roads to the family’s farm are now cut off, leaving it accessible only by a two-hour hike through thick jungle.
Mark and Jennifer Bishop’s house sat atop a ridge in Leilani Estates, their deck looking out toward friends’ homes in a valley.
The epicenter of the 2018 eruption — one of more than 20 places where the ground split open and released huge explosions of molten rock — is now in their front yard.
The eruption point, known as Fissure 8, created a towering cone that pumped out so much lava that it filled the valley in front of their property and flowed about 8 miles to the ocean.
“We used to be on the ridge. Now we’re halfway down the hill,” Mark Bishop said last week, looking up at the huge cone.
In all, lava hitting the ocean created nearly 1 square mile of new land, including a new black sand beach.
The red-hot fluid oozed onto their property and stopped about 20 feet from the home. Theirs is now the last house on the street.
“We just feel really fortunate that our home wasn’t taken,” Mark Bishop said.
Caleb Jones is an Associated Press writer.
