Twenty-three people have been injured after a volcanic explosion caused molten rock to barrel through the roof of a tour boat in Hawaii.
A woman in her 20s was taken to Honolulu in a serious condition with a broken thigh bone.
The other 22 were treated for minor burns and scrapes, including 12 who were treated at a hospital in Hilo.
Tour boat operators say they plan to continue taking visitors to see the lava, but will follow the Coast Guard’s revised policy and stay further away.
The Coast Guard prohibits vessels from getting closer than 300 metres from where Kilauea volcano’s lava oozes into the sea.
The agency had been allowing experienced boat operators to apply for a special licence to get closer, up to 50 metres, but it stopped allowing those exceptions on Monday.
There are strict limits over access to the lava on land for safety reasons, making boat and helicopter tours the only options people have to witness the volcanic spectacle in person.
Shane Turpin, the owner and captain of the vessel that was hit, said he never saw the explosion.
He and his tour group had been in the area for about 20 minutes making passes of the sea entry about 500 metres offshore, Turpin said.
He did not observe “any major explosions,” so he navigated his vessel closer, to about 228 metres from the lava.
“As we were exiting the zone, all of a sudden everything around us exploded,” he said. “It was everywhere.”
The US Geological Survey says explosions of varying sizes occur whenever lava enters much colder seawater.
Kilauea is sending as much as 26 times the amount of lava per second to the sea than it did during the 2016-17 eruption.
The Kilauea volcano has been erupting continuously for the past 35 years.
In May its eruption entered a new phase when it began spurting lava through newly formed fissures in a residential neighbourhood.
It has destroyed more than 700 homes since then.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here