It was beautiful seeing the Goddess spread her shining fan.
The flow was pouring over the cliffs of Puna, a Niagara Falls of burning orange lava, swallowing up everything in its path, homes, beaches, Walter’s Store.
That’s how it was in Kalapana in 1990, 27 years ago this month.
Seeing oozing arms of lava wrap around a house and watch it burst into flames is a sight I’ll never forget. It’s seared into my memory.
This tale is about a volcanic eruption, a nervous bunch of homeowners, and a true leader named Harry Kim.
He was the cool head in the crisis.
A raging hot river was covering all of Kalapana and 10 miles below Pahoa houses were going up in flames. In the end, one local store and 150 homes were underneath the black smoky ground, and mine was one of them.
The pahoehoe oozed like an ebony blanket across the ground, sending out its burning fingers, nothing could stop it. The a’a’ crunched through the ohia trees like a churning bulldozer. It tumbled and marched in a flaming wall, leaving nothing but sizzling rock behind it.
It was pre-historic, a real dinosaur movie.
A gnarly 10-foot high wall of burning rock was lurching down my street as I frantically tied my bed on the top of my car to escape.
The lava wall was moving slowly so I had time to walk toward the gray moving mass, and ended up standing three feet in front of it looking up at the hot wall before me and when rocks fell off the top as it lurched toward me, I quickly ran back to my car in time.
You could say I was rattled.
But Harry was never rattled, his calm voice spoke easily over the radio, it was like hearing a life preserver.
My home was burning down, my world lost to lava and I heard on the radio, “Dis is Harry Kim of your Hawaii County Civil Defense, the lava is moving normally at a rate of 5 miles an hour.” And I really believed that lava was normal — even going the legal speed limit.
It is hard for Kona folks to imagine how it was, but picture a tumbling river of rock sliding down Henry Street. That’s how it felt as flaming magma rolled over our favorite burger joint, and covered the benches where we ate lunch.
One morning Harry called a meeting at a local beach park. The natives were getting restless, residents were freaking out. Twenty of us were in a park pavilion, the flow was right across the street, we could feel the heat, and there was Harry, calm and cool, standing there in shorts, a T-shirt and work boots.
He stepped back and forth slowly as he talked, calming us like a bunch of kids listening to dad telling us everything was all right.
The lava didn’t bother us after that.
And now we have him as mayor. Boy, are we lucky.
Dennis Gregory is an artist, writer and musician who mixes truth and humor in his biweekly column. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com