Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions 64
An anonymous reader writes Officials say molten lava from a Hawaii volcano has been flowing steadily in an area where residents have been warned they might have to evacuate their homes. Dozens of residents in the flow path have been told to complete all necessary preparations by Tuesday for a possible evacuation. From the article: "Janet Babb, a geologist and spokeswoman for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said methane explosions also have been going off. She said decomposing vegetation produces methane gas that can travel subsurface beyond the lava front in different directions, accumulating in pockets that can ignite. She said it was a bit unnerving to hear all the blasts on Saturday."
WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW? (Score:1, Funny)
Xenu just needs to drop some H-bombs in there and shut that joker down.
still a better god than JHV1 (Score:3)
Her neighbors are currently having a bit of a hard time, though.
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That's a big hand!!!!!
Source [seattletimes.com]
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lol um reread the quote I used, it is pretty clear the "less than a handful" is not potential evacuees, but the subset of them who have indicated that they do not already have accommodations to evacuate too.
Kind of like, if my area of town was evacuated, I would head over to the house of a friend or relative nearby, or if the need arose, to family a few hours away. There are very few scenarios where I would actually need to find shelter for longer than it would take for me to make arrangements for my physic
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I think you're probably right, which helps with the disaster preparedness crowd. "Nope, less than a handful. That's zero beds we need set up somewhere. I really hope our estimate isn't too low."
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Colloquially, when we talk about a "handful" of things that can't actually be carried in a hand, we're talking about five or fewer things (the number of things we can count with the fingers of one hand).
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I'm pretty sure that means that's what left of them after they have been ashed by the volcano will easily fit in one hand...
Molten lava? (Score:1)
Re:Molten lava? (Score:5, Informative)
Lava refers to either molten rock...or....molten rock that has flowed, cooled and solidified. "Lava beds" are large areas of once-molten rock that are solidified.
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you should go see The La Brea Tar Pit
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SRSLY? You bought a house in [redacted] Hawaii and didn't get volcano insurance?
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Now who's laughing? [tumblr.com]
Re:OOOOooo "dozens warned they MAY need to flee" (Score:4, Interesting)
I care and I don't even have an uninsured house ... though to be fair my uncle and aunt do :-( Pahoa is so remote you can't even get cellphone coverage there, but it's a beautiful area (it's on the island's rainy side so everything is lush and green). Houses cost in the 100-200k range, and while that is pretty cheap it still sucks to see it all melt away.
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It's not THAT remote (my cellphone worked as of end of last year there). We tourists tend to pass through Pahoa on the way down for the tours hiking across the lava fields or taking the boats out to the old lava egress points on the ocean. Need highway 130 for that...should this lava bisect the town, it is going to hurt the volcano tourism industry significantly Pahoa also is the last place for a pitstop or some food on the way south too.
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I care and I don't even have an uninsured house ... though to be fair my uncle and aunt do :-( ...
do you think it is too late to call up the insurance rep for a policy?
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I bet you could buy a policy through some website that has automated approval. Hopefully those insurance companies have some brains at some point too.
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Pahoa is Native town... these people don't have the kind of money that most Hawaii immigrants do, nor the financial ability to move elsewhere on their island.
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What percent of the US's population do you think is in the risk of a major natural disaster of some kind - volcano, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, landslide, avalanche, etc? This time the dice got rolled and it was their homes that came up snake eyes. It should be noted that the town was built before Pu'u 'O'o became a "thing". There were no signs back then that Pu'u 'O'o was even likely to become an active vent, let alone one that would erupt for over three decades.
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You can't *get* insurance in that district (Score:1)
Most insurers won't write volcano and earthquake damage policies on some districts on the Big Island, Puna being one of them. So if Pele comes for your house, you're out of luck. And not only that - once your property is covered with lava you no longer own it - the title reverts back to the State. Not that anyone really cares that much - it's very difficult to rebuild on thick sheet of solid rock and the people who live in those areas usually have few resources anyway.
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Pictures? (Score:4, Funny)
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Fixed.
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Pictures? (Score:5, Informative)
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/multimedia/index.php?newSearch=true&display=custom&volcano=1&resultsPerPage=20
I'm surprised the original post links to a news story from a Seattle newspaper instead of the actual USGS website.
needs rebranding (Score:2)
Re:needs rebranding (Score:4, Interesting)
No rebranding needed. The Big Island has never exactly been the key to Hawaii's tourism industry (most of the island, especially on the volcano side, doesn't even have sandy beaches.) Plus, just about everything tourist-y on that island already is lava-themed anyway. They've got a lava forest, lava tubes, steam vents powered by underground lava, the giant volcano itself ... heck they even had a highway that got overrun with lava and instead of fixing it they turned that in to a tourist attraction!
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Fixing it? How the frack do you "fix" a highway that had the last five miles buried by multiple meters of molten rock? Walk for half an hour from the current end of the road and you'll see a "No Parking" sign sticking up a couple inches above the solid rock. When we were there a couple of years ago there was an active lava tube a few feet below the surface just a couple hundred meters further along.
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All the Hawaii PR department has to do is rebrand now. "Come see a real, genuine flaming hellscape ..."
I realize that you are trying to be funny, but the volcanoes have long been a major tourist attraction on the Big Island. Thousands visit Volcanoes National Park [wikipedia.org], there are helicopter tours, etc. I once went on one of the helicopter tours, and it was an amazing experience to look straight down into an actively erupting volcano.
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Meh.
If you want a flaming hellscape, Kilauea is a little candle compared to Bárðarbunga in Iceland. Kilauea erupts a couple cubic meters per second. Bárðarbunga erupts a couple hundred. Kilauea's gas emissions barely show up on satellite images. Bárðarbunga's just last night caused levels so high in a town a hundred kilometers away that it went off the top of the safety scale (which they got from Hawaii ;) ). Bárðarbunga has already erupted more lava than of Mauna L
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Iceland is also cold. Contrast it with tropical Hawaii full of sunbathing eye candy :-)
Also, although "Kilauea" is hard to say, I don't even know how to read "BÃrÃarbunga". How do you pronounce the 'Ã' character?
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Damn you Slashdot for butchering my question after posting! Copy-paste looked fine on preview!
Rei: How did you manage to post the unicode in the first place successfully?
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I just typed it. But Slashdot simply "disappears" thorn characters, which is annoying.
Bárðarbunga is full of eye candy. I [wp.com] can [500px.com] point [kvennabladid.is] to [nationalgeographic.com] abundant [interrete.org] examples [blogspot.com] including [axelsig.com] no [youtube.com] shortage [youtube.com] of [youtube.com] videos [youtube.com] on [youtube.com] Youtube [youtube.com] / Vimeo [vimeo.com].
As for pronunciation: Á is said "ow". BOWR-dthar-BOON-ka. The R is an alveolar tap or trill. If that's too hard for you, you can also call it Holuhraun (HOLE-ih-HROYN), Nornahraun (NORDN-uh-HROYN), THorbjargarhraun (THOR-Byardg-ar-HROYN), or a bunch of other names (the TH should really be a t
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Thank you.
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Oh, and for the record, lava and snow are IMHO a beautiful reaction [www.ruv.is]. :) Fire and ice, baby!
Comparatively speaking, lava moves slowly. (Score:2)
If I lived in an area susceptible to volcanic activity, I'd have a plan in place to bug out in the event of an event. Compared to most natural disasters lava moves slowly and for the most part, scientists are able to accurately predict eruption risk ahead of time. I wouldn't wait until told to leave.
I live in an area with a wildfire risk, and in fact last summer this area lost over 500 homes to the, "Black Forest Fire". My place was evacuated but didn't suffer any loss. Wildfires move quite a bit faster th
A crappy news story? (Score:2)
Why not just link directly to the USGS Hawaii Volcano Observatory website? http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/multimedia/index.php?newSearch=true&display=custom&volcano=1&resultsPerPage=20
Methane increase? (Score:4, Funny)
What are they feeding the volcano?
"We said VIRGINS, not VEGANS."
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the surprise is that they built a town there in the first place. now we're supposed to spend our tax dollars on this *emergency*
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the surprise is that they built a town there in the first place. now we're supposed to spend our tax dollars on this *emergency*
First off, lava hasn't flowed there since humans have lived there (at least thousands of years), but we shouldn't spend tax dollars on disaster assistance there? What about Miami, where hurricanes hit regularly, or areas of CA where huge earthquakes hit regularly? What about Portland, where a volcano erupted a few decades ago? Should we not spend tax dollars for disaster relief those places? And I suppose if a tsunami hits any coastal city or town that we shouldn't spend tax dollars helping them out?
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Lava hasn't flowed there since humans have lived
Wrong.
That volcano erupted in 1823, and the current eruption started in 1983, 31 years ago. Research before you spew bullshit, no excuse for those residents living there.
Queen of Wands (Score:2)
You know, there was a recent book by John Ringo that blamed the noise of weapons being discharged while fighting an incursion of Old Ones on methane gas explosions. You don't suppose... ?
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Is that a good book line? It sounds like it is in a similar vein as say the Dresden Files, the Laundry Files, or the Sandman Slim series. Dealing with the other worldly that the regular folk don't see.
Ban high capacity volcanos (Score:1)
And assault lava.
My wife was out there the other night (Score:2)
She was the first to smell a sudden burst of methane, mentioning it the leader of the group, he shouted "we need to get out of here, now!" An explosion followed mere seconds after they has cleared.
I cannot tell you how shaken I w
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She was the first to smell a sudden burst of methane
Not to doubt your story, but how did she smell the methane? Methane is an odorless [wikipedia.org] gas. This is why additional additives are included in the household gas for safety.
Re: My wife was out there the other night (Score:1)