The Lava Dwellers, Big Island, Hawai‘i: These People Live on One of the Most Active Volcanoes on Earth

They come for the privacy, the views, the Pele energy and the rock-bottom real estate prices. Never mind that the volcano could torch their homes at any time.

By David Thompson

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Editor’s Note: By Friday, May 4, at least four volcanic vents had erupted through the streets of the Leilani Estates subdivision in Puna on the Big Island. Photos from the USGS shows lava spouting in the air through cracks in the ground, igniting trees, and sending clouds of gas and sulfur dioxide into the air. Earthquakes have knocked out power to hundreds. Emergency workers are going door-to-door to ensure that all people living there and in the nearby Lanipuna Gardens evacuate, as they are not sure what the lava flow will do next.

The area is just miles away from Kalapana Gardens, where Pele burned and buried homes as recently as 1990. People kept rebuilding. In 2012, David Thompson spoke to some of those residents about why they chose to risk living near Hawai‘i’s most active volcanoes.

Photos and Video: volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/multimedia_chronology.html

Lava Flow Map: volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/multimedia_maps.html

Emergency alerts: hawaiicounty.gov/active-alerts

The east flank of Kīlauea volcano is a land of fire, sulfur dioxide and rock that cuts like glass. This is Pele’s realm, where the molten core of the planet spills through a slit in the crust, advancing and retreating across the surface in utterly unpredictable ways. It is either the end of the earth or the beginning of creation, depending on how you look at it. Either way, it’s no place for a subdivision. Yet, there it is, Kalapana Gardens, a neighborhood of more than 30 homes spread out across the barren flow field at the end of Kaimu-Chain of Craters Road, where the asphalt melted beneath the lava in 2011. Pele has already burned three houses to the ground, then covered that ground with even newer ground. But new homes keep popping up.

A neighborhood on the rocks: The new Kalapana Gardens is emerging directly above the old Kalapana Gardens, which was buried beneath 40 to 60 feet of lava in 1990. Most of the new homes have been constructed without building permits.

Photo: Olivier Koning

Who is building out here? Why would anyone want to live on the flow field of one of the most active volcanos on Earth? Are these people nuts? To find out, we trek onto the pāhoehoe to meet some of the lava dwellers.