Fig. 1: Images and impacts of the 2018 LERZ eruption.

Much of Kīlauea volcano (and its neighbor Mauna Loa) have been re-surfaced by new lava in the very recent past. The areas colored red in a are lavas emplaced in the last 200 years. Lavas from the 2018 LERZ eruption impacted directly on only a tiny portion of the County of Hawai’i⁷, some 0.34% of its land area (white areas in b). Significant destruction in the Leilani Estates and Lanipuna subdivisions (L and G in b) occurred in May. Later activity spread further and mostly to the southeast. b From late May to July 2018, lava flowing first northeast then to the southeast, devastating the Kapoho Beach Lots and Vacationland subdivisions⁸ (K and V in b). Two forms of structural damage resulted. 1. Houses close to the fissures were bombarded by projectiles (c) and/or damaged by ground cracking and hot volcanic gas, especially SO₂. The image shows a house that was damaged but not destroyed by large projectiles. 2. Houses in the direct path of the lava either were burned (d) or surrounded by the flows (e). The houses in d were located on the coast at Kapoho tide pools. Several large ‘islands’ like the one shown in the foreground in e were isolated and without access to County electrical or water supplies. (Note fissure 8 fountain in the background). The time required to return the lava-covered land to its former state is probably decades. f shows the margin of the lava flow field from the fissure 8. The main 28-m-high cone constructed during this phase of eruption is in the background. Flow thicknesses here range from 5 to 15 m. Closer to the former coastline, lava reached thicknesses of 55 to 280 m^7,8. Images c, d, and f are courtesy of Getty Images (Photographer Mario Tama), Reuters (Photographer, Terray Sylvester), and the Hilo Tribune-Herald (Photographer, Tom Callis), respectively. Image e Photographer Bruce Houghton.