PAHOA, Hawaii — The electricity poles at the junction of Pohoiki Road and Leilani Avenue were split like matchsticks. Ohia lehua trees felled by the lava flows smoldered under the cloudy sky. The house where Ellen Garnett raised five children? Surrounded by mounds of hardened lava.

“Welcome to our ghost town,” said Ms. Garnett, 56, as she held a gas mask to her face while venturing into Leilani Estates, the once serene rural outpost on Hawaii Island devastated by the eruption this month of the Kilauea volcano. “This is what paradise looks like when it turns into a little bit of hell.”

An “explosive eruption” unleashed a cloud of hazardous ash 30,000 feet into the air Thursday, but even the day before, as Ms. Garnett and other evacuated residents made brief forays home, Leilani felt like an eerie lost city in the Polynesian jungle, its abandoned homes facing an onslaught not of vines but molten rock.