What kind of damage has kilauea caused

Business owners say they understand the balance Kim is trying to strike, especially when it comes to opening up lava areas to tourists. Angry residents have come to blows with trespassers ignoring private property signs, and many Leilani residents have blocked the sides of roads with sawhorses and caution cones to prevent people from sneaking into the lava field, which in Leilani sits entirely on private property.

Still, tourist dollars are critically important to the local economy, said Amedeo Markoff, who owns a gift shop near Leilani Estates. Markoff, 47, opened the shop a few months before the eruption and was pleasantly surprised to see how much high-end art he was selling. Markoff's Puna Gallery and Gift Emporium features jewelry, artwork and clothes made by about local artists. But the lava flow destroyed or forced the vacancy of dozens of rental homes in the area, and now he's selling less artwork suitable for decorating a large home.

Tourism, the island's biggest economic driver, has slowed significantly since the eruption. The sugar-sand beaches on the island's west side remain sunny and uncrowded, Volcanoes National Park has almost fully reopened, and the restaurants in Hilo are still serving up fresh poke and rum drinks in pineapples.

Cruise ships are porting in both Hilo and Kailua-Kona, and both of the island's main airports still offer nonstop flights from the mainland. But in the first quarter of , visitor volume dropped 9. Because fewer tourists are coming, there's less need for service workers at restaurants, hotels and vacation homes, and unemployment has ticked up, from 2.

He said at least 20 of the artists he features lost their homes in the eruption, and his family is renting at a friend's house because they're still unable to return to their home. It's imperative that people realize that the backbone of the community is the financial wellbeing of the businesses here in Poona and Pahoa and they're still suffering," Markoff said.

Pamela Ah-Nee, 61, has a front-row seat to the area's new geological features, including a foot-deep lava ravine running diagonally across her land. There's also now steam vents emitting stinking sulfur into the air, painting the rocks in otherworldly orange and yellow. Before the eruption, Ah-Nee envisioned using the lot to build a retreat for her fellow Alzheimer's caregivers, a place where they could seek respite from their emotionally draining work.

Her own house a few streets over was undamaged in the eruption, but she comes to her volcano-damaged lot every day to marvel at the scene. Barred from her land for months, Ah-Nee returned to find much of it undisturbed by the lava flows, although it sat beneath nearly four feet of crunchy lava balls called tephra.

A contractor shoved the tephra off the remaining grassy areas with a bulldozer, making the lot building-ready again, but she's not confident she'll be able to ever build there. It's a blow to her retirement plans; she closed her counseling business when her evacuated clients and neighbors stopped coming.

Because she can't build, she's considering charging tourists for lava tours: "What can we do with our own property if we can't put structures on it? Her neighbor, retired mainland police officer Mike Clemmons, 56, is similarly disappointed. His home survived the eruption but the toxic gases eroded most of his home's metal fixtures. The months-long evacuation forced him to delay his wedding and gave looters an opportunity to steal his solar panels.

Authorities have cited or arrested 48 people for trespassing in the closure area, with the majority at nearby Lava Tree State Park and MacKenzie Recreation Area. Now, a watchman working for the homeowners association drives around the semi-abandoned neighborhood in a battered pickup, politely confronting anyone he doesn't recognize. On a recent afternoon, Clemmons pushed a mower over the fast-growing grass alongside his driveway.

He counts himself lucky because he's been able to live in the house while he's painstakingly replaced fixtures, but worries he'll never be able to sell the house when it comes time to move again. Like many neighborhoods on the island, Leilani was developed in the s, decades before scientists were able to accurately map and estimate the lava hazard risks. Nine months after the Kilauea eruption destroyed their house, the Smiths are finally preparing to go home for good after living in five temporary spaces since they first evacuated.

Like many residents, they are trying to make the best of their situation: Their neighbor abandoned her home during the evacuation and refused to return, so the Smiths bought it with hopes of maintaining their next-door farm. The Smiths can't afford to rebuild their existing home because they didn't have insurance. They knew living on the Big Island would be a gamble, but it was one they were willing to make.

Without the road, the Smiths will have to continue hiking into their property as they did late last month, three days after they buying their new home. Pulling open the squeaky screen door of the lanai, Deb Smith stepped carefully through their new house.

It's former owner, fleeing the lava, had abandoned it in a hurry. An onion sat on the counter near a teapot. The fridge was full of food, now spoiled, and drawers hung half-open. Hundreds of to-do items remain: a new driveway, home repairs, clearing lava, replanting. But after all these months of worry and frustration and anguish, there's finally a path back, even if it no longer runs through the now lava-covered driveway the Smiths once used.

Facebook Twitter Email. David Phillips, a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory spokesman, said the agency was monitoring the situation. A magnitude The USGS said it had received more than reports of people who felt the earthquake but significant damage to buildings or structures was not expected. Kilauea last erupted in , destroying more than homes and spewing enough lava to fill , Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The lava flowed over four months, leaving deposits up to 80ft 24 metres thick in some areas. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Jeremy Berke. Kilauea has been continuously erupting for more than a month, spewing ash and lava on Hawaii's Big Island. Lava has destroyed at least homes and properties near the volcano, according to ABC News.

Over 2, people have been evacuated since the eruptions began, and many are still not able to return to their homes. More than 20 active fissures have broken open, oozing lava all over the island and into the Pacific Ocean. The flows release toxic gases like sulfur dioxide, which can pose respiratory problems, especially for children and the elderly.

Lava flows can quickly overtake and scorch anything in their path. They have covered vast swaths of land on the Big Island. Take, for example, Kapoho Bay, which is close to Kapoho Crater, an active crater on the Kilauea volcano. This is a satellite image of the bay on June 3, as lava approached.