Earthquakes continue to wreak havoc at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Earthquakes at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park have riddled Highway 11, other park roads, overlooks and trails with dangerous sink holes and cracks.
More than 18,000 temblors at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in the past month have “wreaked havoc” throughout one of the state’s top tourist attractions.
A Monday release from the park – most of which has been closed since May due to seismic activity and explosions from Kilauea volcano’s summit crater – said the Jaggar Museum and the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory buildings are damaged and stand empty. More than 60 large explosion events have occurred since the park closed on May 11.
Larger earthquakes, or those magnitude 5.0 and higher, have riddled Highway 11, other park roads, overlooks and trails with dangerous sink holes and cracks. The earthquakes have also caused broken waterlines, leaving most of the park without running water for fire suppression.
Earthquakes have riddled park roads, overlooks and trails with dangerous sink holes and cracks.
The park will be able to fully assess damages and consider reopening when these “destructive earthquakes” subside, which may take years.
According to Park Superintendent Cindy Orlando, “the only certainty is uncertainty.”
“It’s impossible to say when the park can reopen, what it’s going to look like and what the visitor experience will be. We are cautiously optimistic that seismicity decreased over the weekend,” Orlando said in the release. “Everyone’s safety is our top priority and we are still in an unpredictable and hazardous phase of this eruption cycle.”
Kilauea's summit crater, Halemaumau, has more than quadrupled in size as magma drains out to the lower East Rift Zone eruption outside the park, according to the release. Its volume has increased to 800 million cubic meters, according to USGS, an amount equivalent to about 300,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
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