Page 3 of Eruption

“This is not a drill,” Theo said. “This is for the safety of everyone on the grounds. That includes all park personnel. Everyone, please, out of the park.”

Within seconds, park visitors started coming at Rachel hard. The grounds were more crowded than she had thought. Mothers ran as they pushed strollers ahead of them. Children ran ahead of their parents. A teen on a bike swerved to avoid a child, went down, got up cursing, climbed back on his bike, and kept going. Smoke was suddenly everywhere.

“It could be a volcano!” Rachel heard a young woman yell.

Rachel saw two army jeeps parked outside the distant banyan grove. Another jeep roared past her; Ted Murray was at the wheel. She shouted his name but Murray, who probably couldn’t hear her over the chaos, didn’t turn around.

Murray’s jeep stopped, and soldiers jumped out. Murray directed them to form a perimeter around the entrance to the grove and ensure that the park visitors kept moving out.

Rachel ran toward the banyan grove. Another jeep pulled up in front of her and a soldier stepped out.

“You’re heading in the wrong direction,” the soldier said.

“You—you don’t understand,” she stammered. “Those—they’re my trees.”

“I don’t want to have to tell you again, ma’am.”

Rachel Sherrill heard a chopper engine; she looked up and saw a helicopter come out of the clouds from behind the twin peaks. Saw it touch down and saw its doors open. Men in hazmat suits, tanks strapped to their backs, came out carrying extinguishers labeledCOLD FIRE. They pointed them like handguns and ran toward the trees.

Her trees.

Rachel ran toward them and toward the fire.

In that same moment she heard another crash from the sky, and this time she knew for sure it wasn’t a coming storm.

Please not today,she thought.

FOUR

The next day, Hilo’s newspaper, theHawaii Tribune-Herald,did not mention the evacuation at the botanical gardens. Neither did theHonolulu Star-Advertiser. Or any of the other island newspapers. There was no report in theNew York Times.

None of the local newscasts brought up what had happened at the park the day before. There was no chatter about it on talk-radio stations, which were obsessed with Hawai‘i’s tourism being down for the first quarter of the year.

There were some mentions on social media, but not many, nothing viral, perhaps because the crowds had been relatively sparse at the Hilo Botanical Gardens on that particular Monday. Some Twitter posts described a small herbicide fire that had been successfully contained by the rapid response, though a few people did mention that they had seen a helicopter land on the grounds when they were leaving.

None of this was surprising. This was Hilo. This was laid-back Hawai‘i, despite the fact that everyone here lived in theshadows of the volcanoes, this menacing constant in their lives, no one going very long without their eyes being drawn once again to Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.

The park remained closed for two days.

When it reopened, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

ERUPTION

CHAPTER 1

Honoli‘i Beach Park, Hilo, Hawai‘i

Thursday, April 24, 2025

Time to eruption: 116 hours, 12 minutes, 13 seconds

Dennis!” Standing on the beach, John MacGregor had to yell so the surfer would hear him over the sound of the waves. “How about you don’t go allkukaeon me, if that would be all right with you.”

The kids that John MacGregor was coaching had heard the expression from him before, and they knew full well that it wasn’t a compliment.Kukaewas a native Hawaiian word for “kook,” and when John MacGregor said it, it meant that someone in the water was acting as if he’d never been on a board before. Or was about to end up underneath one.

Mac was thirty-six years old and an accomplished surfer, or at least he had been when he was younger, before his knees started sounding like a marching band every time he got into a crouchon his board. Now his passion for the sport was channeled into these tough fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-old kids from Hilo, half of whom had already dropped out of school.

They came to this beach just two miles from downtown Hilo four afternoons a week, and for a few hours they were part of what islanders called the postcard Hawai‘i, the one from the TV shows and the movies and the Chamber of Commerce brochures.