A series of fresh earthquakes on Friday, including a powerful magnitude 6.9, hit Hawaii's Big Island, where the Kilauea volcano has been spewing fountains of lava into residential areas and forcing hundreds to evacuate.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the strongest tremor at 12.32 pm measured 6.9, the island's largest earthquake in more than 40 years.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said the quake, whose epicentre was on the south flank of the volcano, was not large enough to cause a tsunami although it generated sea level changes around the island of up 40 cm.

It caused buildings to shake at the Community Centre in Pahoa town, one of two evacuation centres in the area hastily set up after lava started burbling up through fissures in the ground in neighbourhoods nearby.

A new fissure opened up just before the latest tremor on Friday in one of those neighbourhoods, Leilani Estates, about a dozen miles from the volcano, the Hawaii County Civil Defence Agency said, making a total of four found so far.