Page 119 of Eruption
Imagining a new and more deadly mushroom cloud, one that might be about to cover everyone and everything.
CHAPTER 88
Summit Cabin, Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i
Rebecca was at the front door of the cabin, staring at what looked like a gaping wound in the outside wall of the caldera.
When he saw her, Mac shouted, “Did you do this?”
She shouted right back at him, “Are you crazy, MacGregor? The volcano did this!”
She moved quickly to where Mac was standing and watched the flow of lava get closer. Nothing in their imaging had indicated the vents on this side of the caldera were in any danger of being breached when Mauna Loa erupted. The data was wrong.
They could feel the heat from the ground inside their boots. Before they came up here, Mac had thought about wearing thermal suits. But he’d rejected the idea.
The ground shook again.
There was even more fire in the sky above the summit. The summit cairn was just under two miles away from where theystood, but they were in far more danger from the caldera, which was morphing before their eyes.
Rebecca noticed the helipad, a hundred or so yards away from the cabin, completely engulfed by smoking lava, part of a rising river of it.
Moving directly toward them, like the tide.
Rebecca Cruz said, “What do we do? The helicopter can’t come back here now, and the observatory is miles down the mountain.”
“We move as fast as we can to stay ahead of the lava,” Mac said.
He watched as the lava made a slight turn on its way toward the trail behind them, as if diverting itself without any need for explosives or help from them.
There was another blast from the caldera, and another vent blew open.
More lava coming at them now.
Mac and Rebecca ran.
Anyone who’d ever hiked up here, and Mac had, had been warned against running on this trail, even when heading back down the mountain; a careless movement could easily break an ankle.
They ran anyway.
CHAPTER 89
Na‘alehu Police Station, Na‘alehu, Hawai‘i
Captain Sam Aukai, chief of police in Na‘alehu—Hawaiian for “the volcanic ashes”—was inside the station a little before eleven o’clock in the morning when he heard the sirens: 121 decibels of boom-box sound rocking the southernmost town in the United States and the island’s sweetest, quietest garden spot.
The sound, Sam well knew, came from the All-Hazard Statewide Outdoor Warning Siren System that broadcast from ninety-two towers installed in communities around the Big Island. The sirens told him there was a threat, but not where or how bad. Mostly Sam wanted to know if his town was safe.
There was one person who would know for sure. His friend Pia Wilson was the point person over at HVO for the volcano alert levels that charted the time frame of volcanic threats.
“Thank you for calling, Chief Aukai,” said the woman whoanswered HVO’s main number and identified herself as Ms. Kilima, the librarian taking phone duty today.
When Sam and Pia had spoken a few days ago, Pia told him that the flow would primarily be to the north and east the way it had been in 2022.
“Can HVO verify what Ms. Wilson told me, that Na‘alehu, just east of South Point, is still safe from the lava flow?” Sam asked Ms. Kilima.
“Ms. Wilson no longer works here,” the librarian said, her words clipped. “She quit a couple of days ago.”
Sam didn’t ask why and didn’t care. “Who took over for her on volcano alert levels?”