How it all began — steps toward volcano monitoring

SPECIAL TO WEST HAWAII TODAY

Last week’s Volcano Watch described the events and efforts that led up to Thomas Jaggar’s arrival on Kilauea to start monitoring the volcano.

Jaggar stepped off the steamer Mauna Kea in Hilo on Jan. 17, 1912, and, by noon, was at the Volcano House hotel on the northeast rim of Kilauea Caldera. He got right to work. By 4:30 p.m., he had surveyed elevations and mapped the lava lake within Halemaumau Crater.

The work was a one-man operation, with Jaggar living at the Volcano House hotel and making all the observations, which he reported to local newspapers every Thursday, as Frank A. Perret had started in 1911, and as we do today. It wasn’t long before Jaggar hired an assistant. Frank B. Dodge, an “athletic young Honoluluan and son of a government surveyor,” who also had hardy cowboy skills, arrived on Jan. 24.

Besides monitoring, the main order of business was construction of a laboratory. Demosthenes Lycurgus, the well-known owner of the Volcano House hotel, spearheaded a local fundraising effort, and Hilo businesses generously donated $1,785. The contract was awarded to H. Hackfeld & Co. (later named Amfac Inc.), and the main building was constructed over a cellar for seismographs excavated by territorial prisoners. The land was subleased from the Volcano House with the permission of its lessor, the Bishop Estate.

After being in Hawaii for only six weeks, Jaggar received a cable from Boston asking him to come home immediately because both of his children, 4-month-old Eliza and 6-year-old Kline, were ill. He was on the next steamer east, leaving observatory duties to assistant Dodge.

While Jaggar was in Boston, the first scientific collaborators arrived at Kilauea to sample volcanic gases and remeasure lava temperatures. Dr. Arthur Day, director of the Carnegie Laboratory, and E.S. Shepherd, the same scientist who had accompanied Frank Perret in 1911, arrived in early May 1912 and began setting up for their gas collections. On May 28, conditions were finally right, and they, with Dodge, descended rope ladders into Halemaumau Crater, where they collected volcanic gases that had not yet been exposed to air — their main goal.

Until that moment, many prominent scientists believed volcanic gases did not contain water. But as soon as they began pumping gases into collection bottles, heavy condensation within the sampling tubes indicated otherwise. “We were thereby enabled to gather a quantity of water sufficient to establish its existence among the volatile ingredients exhaled by the volcano beyond the criticism of the most skeptical.” Score one science victory for the Jaggar team.

Jaggar returned to Kilauea in mid-June with renewed focus. He was accompanied by seismologist H.O. Wood, who had recently studied California earthquakes after the 1906 San Francisco disaster. Wood’s job was to get the mechanical seismometers up and running in the cellar, now named the Whitney Vault in honor of observatory benefactors Edward and Caroline Whitney.

“Thus in the first six months of 1912 I became a resident of a volcano in Hawaii and had an adequate laboratory … and the beginnings of seismograph records in the basement,” Jaggar wrote in his autobiography years later.

Throughout the first 40 years of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, staff scientists documented the activities of Kilauea, Mauna Loa and Hualalai volcanoes. Earthquakes, seismic tremor and ground tilting generally preceded and accompanied changes in eruptive activity. Rare events, such as an explosive and fatal eruption of Kilauea and an intrusion beneath Hualalai, were documented. But by 1953, when Jaggar died, the basic cadre of monitoring tools still relied on mechanical seismometers that detected earthquakes and swayed to ground tilt. That was all to change in the next decade.

HVO’s story will continue in next week’s Volcano Watch article. Volcano Awareness Month activities scheduled for this week include the story of HVO’s first 100 years in a program at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park’s visitor center on Tuesday, a talk about the impact of lava flows on Kalapana during the past 35 years at the University of Hawaii at Hilo on Thursday, and guided hikes in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Details about these activities are available at hvo.wr.usgs.gov or by calling 967-8844.

Kilauea activity update

A lava lake present within the Halemaumau Overlook vent during the past week resulted in night-time glow visible from the Jaggar Museum overlook. The lake, which is about 330 to 410 feet below the floor of Halemaumau Crater and visible by HVO’s webcam, rose and fell slightly during the week in response to a series of large deflation-inflation cycles.

On Kilauea’s east rift zone, surface lava flows restarted on Jan. 6 after a brief pause, with lava flow activity limited to a moderate-sized area of breakouts high above the pali, just 2.2 miles southeast of Puu Oo. Over the past week, these flows have advanced only a minor distance downhill, likely limited by fluctuations in lava supply because of the ongoing deflation-inflation cycles. The flow field on the coastal plain remains inactive after activity stalled there two weeks ago, and the West Kailiili ocean entry is still inactive. Occasional short flows and spattering have been observed over the past week within Puu Oo crater.

Three earthquakes beneath Hawaii Island were reported felt this past week. A magnitude 1.7 earthquake occurred at 1 a.m. Tuesday and was located 5 miles northwest of Hualalai summit at a depth of 9 miles. A magnitude 2.4 earthquake occurred at 1:45 p.m. on the same day and was located 6 miles west of Kawaihae at a depth of 8 miles. A magnitude 2.0 earthquake occurred at 1:19 a.m. Wednesday and was located 3 miles northwest of Captain Cook at a depth of 6 miles.

Visit the HVO website, hvo.wr.usgs.gov, for detailed Kilauea and Mauna Loa activity updates, recent volcano photos, recent earthquakes and more; call 967-8862 for a Kilauea summary; email questions to askHVO@usgs.gov.

Volcano Watch is a weekly article and activity update written by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.