Mahina Maag, a sixth grader at Ernest Brown Desilva Elementary School, shared this essay she wrote about her experience with the eruption for her class.
I had no idea that rocks could fall from the sky, let alone witnessing it before my very own eyes. The scientific name for the volcanic rocks is tephra, but I didn't care at the time because tephra falling into my own backyard was terrifying. This event definitely showed me anything can happen.
The eruption started with a 6.9 earthquake. The earthquakes continued throughout the month of may, making everyone in Leilani curious. It got to the point where the earthquakes were so huge, they shook my entire house. The books on my shelves shook, The glass on my windows chatted, and the lights in my house flickered like lighting in the sky. During this time, the lava in halemaumau had disappeared into the ground.
I thought to myself, “Where was the lava going? Why has it disappeared?” My eight year old mind filled up with questions like water filling up a cup. My whole family was concerned about where it went. We were all terrified. As the days went by the lava was nowhere to be seen, until this humongous earthquake happened, and shortly after that the first fissure popped up. They were popping up everywhere throughout Leilani estates. First, Lanipuna gardens. Then, upper pohoiki. And one of the most traumatic, the lava from one of the fissures covered kapoho entirely. It didn't even exist anymore. I was frightened by the fact that it was very possible that a fissure could pop up in my very own backyard.
Just five fissures out of twenty four made the air fill up with this poisonous gas called sulphur. And as i mentioned before, it made volcanic rocks called tephra fall from the sky. The sulphur had a very strong odor, it smelt like rotten eggs and musty old socks. The rocks on the other hand were very easy to break with your hands, but they were as sharp as glass and could cut you terribly.
My dad decided that it wasn't safe to live in our house anymore, so he had to find a rental home. We moved into our “new house”, a strange rental home that smelt like old people and cheese. I was really weird. The first time I slept there, I laid awake on my new uncomfortable bed. It felt like there were rocks and pebbles inside it. I laid there missing the familiarity of my own bed. I was thinking about how my house and neighborhood would never look the same again.
On my ninth birthday it was safe enough to see our house, so my dad took me and my brother there to spend the night. It was the first time I saw my house in almost a year. The eruption had not stopped yet, but it was slowing down. It felt nice to be back home. The whole house was covered in tephra, mold, and rust. It still wasn't safe enough to live in, so the rental house had to do for now.
About an hour later I turned on the news and saw my mom, my aunty pi’i, and my cousin Hinano. They were talking about the eruption. As I was watching them, they started to talk about how the eruption had affected their lives tremendously. My aunty had brought up the Hawaiian goddess Pele. Pele is the goddess of lava and volcanoes. She was talking about how Pele had been ferocious toward the people of Puna.
We went back to our rental home while I asked my dad, “Are we ever gonna be able to live in our house again?”
“I'm not sure right now, maybe someday we will,” he responded in a miserable manner.
A couple months later we learned that it was safe enough to live in our house again. The lava had stopped! It was an astounding feeling that I could go back to my childhood home. When we decided to move back into our house, we had to do a lot of renovations. First, we had to go through the whole house and get rid of all the mold. Second, we had to remove all the rust from the entire house, the eruption made it rust terribly. Third, we had to get rid of clothes and had to get rid of all showerheads, sinks, and anything made out of metal because it all rusted grossly. Last and finally, we had to paint the entire house again, it took months, we had to paint it again because the paint was chipped off, faded, and filled with mold and bugs. It took a lot of time and effort to make our house liveable again, although like I said it would never look the same.
Now, almost three years later… whenever there's an earthquake, I freak the heck out! I will search up the volcanoes in my location to see if they have erupted. Then search up how big the earthquake was, and bother my dad while he is watching baseball on his black leather chair to ask him, “Dad there was an earthquake, is the volcano going to erupt again?”
“No silly,” he responds while grinning, “we are safe I promise.”
“Ok then,” I say while sighing with relief. Then after our little talk, I sat down by my dad on a big fuzzy bean bag chair and started watching baseball with him.
My family has a lot of experience with volcanoes. First in 1983, then in 1990, 2014, and finally 2018… but I never thought an eruption would ever happen in my lifetime. Today, in 2021 I live right next to the most active biggest fissure, now called Ahu’aila’au. Now I know that anything can happen in my or anyone's lives, even a lava eruption.
