Kilauea volcano erupts on Hawaii’s Big Island

Play Video

1:24

Kilauea volcano erupts on Hawaii’s Big Island – video report

The Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island erupted late on Sunday and shot a steam cloud into the atmosphere that lasted about an hour.

The eruption happened in Halema’uma’u crater, the US Geological Survey said. Kilauea is in the Hawaii Volcanoes national park.

Tom Birchard, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Hawaii, said a new lava flow interacted with a pool of water inside the crater and that led to a short-lived but a fairly vigorous eruption.

All the water evaporated out of the lake and a steam cloud shot up about 30,000ft (9km) into the atmosphere, Birchard said.

The National Weather Service in Honolulu issued an advisory warning of fallen ash from the volcano. Excessive exposure to ash is an eye and respiratory irritant, it said. The agency later said the eruption was easing and a “low-level steam cloud” was lingering in the area.

By 1am, USGS officials told Hawaii News Now that there were reported lava fountains shooting about 165ft (50 metres) into the sky and feeding a growing lava lake within the crater that used to hold water.

David Phillips, a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory spokesman, said the agency was monitoring the situation.

“We will send out further notifications on Kilauea and other Hawaiian volcanoes as we observe changes,” he said.

A magnitude-4.4 earthquake hit about an hour after the volcano began to erupt.

The USGS said it had received more than 500 reports of people who felt the earthquake but significant damage to buildings or structures was not expected.

Kilauea last erupted in 2018, destroying more than 700 homes and spewing enough lava to fill 320,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The lava flowed over four months, leaving deposits up to 80ft (24 metres) thick in some areas.