by John Dvorak
Two weeks later, on September 1, 1923, an earthquake struck Japan, demolishing buildings and causing massive fires to sweep through and destroy most of Yokohama and Tokyo.
More than a hundred thousand people died and more than a million were homeless. The United States government sent Thomas Jaggar to report on the earthquake damage. Isabel went with him.
They spent five weeks in Japan. While in Tokyo, they lived in a tent provided by the United States Consulate and shared a mess prepared by the United States Marine Corps. Near the end of the trip, the mayor of Tokyo sent them on a small steamer to the nearby volcanic island of Oshima. There were rumors the island was about to explode. Jaggar quelled the rumors, deciding that there was no immediate concern of an eruption.
They returned to Kilauea on November 10 to find that the lava level was three hundred feet below the crater rim.
Their six-year marriage, preceded by a year of courtship, had been a period of extraordinary activity at Halema’uma’u. The crater had collapsed and refilled four times. And they knew the time intervals between collapses. Forty months had passed between June 1916 and November 1919, then thirty months to May 1922, and fifteen months to August 1923. The next collapse should occur in another year or so, probably not earlier than the fall of 1924.
They had long delayed a trip to the United States mainland to visit friends. They also wanted to go to New York and talk to editors about writing books about volcanoes. And Thomas was anxious for a return trip to the Caribbean.
And so they must have been confident that, if they left immediately, they could complete their travels and return to Kilauea by June 1924, long before the next collapse of Halema’uma’u might be expected.
On January 7, 1924, a month after the Jaggars’ departure, Oliver Emerson, a recent graduate of the University of Hawaii who had been working at the observatory for several months, made the daily trip to the edge of Halema’uma’u to record the activity of the lava lake. On that day, as Emerson noted, the lake level was two hundred feet below the rim. The lake itself consisted of two main pools that had come to be known as West Loch and East Loch. Three craggy islands comprised of dark solidified lava stood where the two pools joined. A few hundred feet from the molten lava of East Loch was a small lava pond that occasionally overflowed and sent red-hot liquid lava pouring into East Loch. On January 7, four such cascades of lava were streaming from the pool into East Loch.
Two weeks later, again making the daily trip to Halema’uma’u, Emerson recorded the lake level to be 110 feet below the crater rim. All three islands were now submerged. West Loch and East Loch were now one vast lake. In fact, this was the largest lava lake ever recorded at Kilauea. Its longest dimension was 1,500 feet. Its areal extent covered more than forty-five acres. There were also, as Emerson noted, “countless tumultuous fountains” of incandescent red rock “dancing” across the lake’s surface.
A month later, on February 22, the floor of Halema’uma’u dropped and the molten lava drained away. Emerson and Finch expected a replay of the cyclic events of the last few years. Instead, nothing happened, at least, not immediately. No clouds of steam or dust rose from the crater. No eruption of lava occurred elsewhere on the volcano. And no molten lava reappeared to fill the crater.
Two months later the silence was broken.
On the evening of April 21, forty miles from the observatory, at the eastern end of the island near the village of Kapoho, Henry Lyman was inside his house when he felt the slight shaking of an earthquake. By itself, it raised no concern. But, within minutes, a second shaking occurred, then a third. They became so numerous that Lyman was unable to sleep, and so he stayed awake all night counting earthquakes. By morning, when the flurry stopped, he had counted eighty-eight.
That afternoon, the shaking resumed and was more severe than the previous night. In fact, the shaking was almost continuous. One local person who decided to count earthquakes recorded 238 distinct events between 5 P.M. and 9 P.M.—an average rate of almost one a minute.
The next day, April 23, Finch, Emerson and Boles arrived to survey the area. They found dozens of new ground ruptures, some hundreds of feet long, running, in parallel fashion, in a zone from Kapoho to the sea—a distance of about a mile. At the sea’s edge was a new lagoon where the ground had sunk as much as twelve feet overnight—an action that confirmed why the area was known as “Kapoho,” a Hawaiian word that meant “a depression” or “a lowering.”
The same day Finch announced publicly that an eruption should be expected soon at Kapoho. Instead, the earthquake rate diminished quickly. And no eruption happened. The volcano was again silent.
This time the silence lasted only one week. On May 1 the floor of Halema’uma’u started collapsing again, causing a funnel to form at the bottom of the crater. Small rock avalanches rolled continuously down the sides of the crater. The collapse continued, so that by May 6, the walls of the crater started to fall inward, enlarging the crater. By May 8 the bottom of the crater was more than six hundred feet deep and a roar of rock avalanches could be heard for miles. Clouds of dust and steam billowed thousands of feet into the air. On May 10 Boles pronounced the activity “the most spectacular seen in the Hawaiian National Park for years” and encouraged people to visit the park and stay at the Volcano House. That night the hotel was full. That night the volcano also exploded.
It happened at ten o’clock. In view of what was to come, it was a small explosion, rattling the doors and the windows of the Volcano House.
At daybreak, Finch, Emerson, Boles and a party of “interested people” staying at the Volcano House—that is how a newspaper reporter described them—drove in cars almost to the edge of Halema’uma’u, as close as they could go. New rock fragments were scattered all around. The largest was a four-hundred-pound block that had been blown a few hundred feet from the crater’s edge.
That night Finch stayed at the crater’s edge. For a brief period early in the morning he felt a spasm of earthquakes. And nothing more. There were no more explosions.
The next day and the next night were quiet, only heavy dust clouds rising from the crater. The following afternoon, May 13, Boles decided it was safe enough to lead a crew of seven who were filming a promotional movie for the Volcano House to the crater’s edge.
Finch was standing at the highest point at Kilauea, a bluff known as Uwekahuna, a mile north of Halema’uma’u. At 4 P.M. he saw a double explosion, first near the center of the crater and second near the east side. He watched as rocks arched up above a rising dust cloud, one fragment going nearly half a mile into the air. He could hear the noise of those same rocks when they hit the ground around the crater rim and could hear a roaring coming from inside the crater.
Boles and the film crew were at the edge of the crater. “Escape seemed impossible,” he would recall, “but we made a run for it.” Flying stones and falling ash filled the air. “So terrific was their downpour,” Boles would say, that “stone piled up around us.” And they continued to run.
Boles was slower than the others, and he fell behind. At one point, his foot broke through a thin lava crust and he tripped and fell, cutting and scraping his hands and arms on the sharp surfaces. He staggered up and saw just ahead a shallow crevice large enough to get into. He dove into it, covering his face with his hands and trying to protect his head with his arms. Boulders bounced all around him. He thought a direct hit would have finished him.
The barrage of rocks lasted several minutes. After it ended, the others came back and found him. Two of them had been injured, but Boles was by far the worst. Back at the Volcano House, their wounds were dressed, Boles still suffering from the shock of the event. Finch, who had seen the explosion from Uwekahuna, was surprised anyone had survived.
The next day a huge explosion occurred at 9:05 A.M. It was followed by the rise of a dust-filled cauliflower cloud for an hour. At the end of the hour, as the rising of the cloud lessened, Emerson hustled down to the crater, finding that a 100-foot-wide
ledge had fallen into the crater. The next day, again after an explosion, both Finch and Emerson went to the crater. They found hot rocks that “were still sizzling.”
Another day passed. On May 16, fifteen minutes after “a good explosion with heavy cloud,” as recorded by Finch, who viewed the cloud from the relative safety of the observatory, he and Emerson left for the crater. They found no significant change, just two small cracks that crossed the road a few thousand feet from the crater rim, an indication that the ground was weakening.
Thurston arrived that night. The next day there was another major explosion. As before, within minutes after it ended, Finch and Emerson, this time joined by Thurston, hurried to the crater. So much steam and dust was still rising and swirling around the crater rim that they were unable to make any significant observations. But they were convinced that there was a pattern to the explosive activity.
It was now May 17. During the last five days, Finch had noted, immediately after an explosion, which could last for up to an hour, the volcano was quiet for several hours and the crater could be approached.
And so it was that the next day, a Sunday, after a small explosion in the morning, Finch, Emerson and Thurston headed for the crater. This time several local people joined them. The group drove down in two automobiles. They kept the motors running in case they had to make a hasty departure.
Most everyone immediately set off and walked toward the crater rim. Thurston stayed next to the automobiles. Finch walked a short distance away to a sandy spit and sat down on a boulder that had been ejected the previous day.
At 11:07 A.M. Finch felt a wave of increased air pressure that was so strong it hurt his head. He jumped up and told himself, “Here comes a terrible one.”
And terrible is was. Within seconds rocks were shooting out of the crater. Finch started to take photographs, then stopped when he saw the size of the cloud of dust and steam coming toward him. He ducked down behind a low cliff. The cloud rolled over him. A barrage of boulders, some weighing as much as three hundred pounds, dropped all around him.
After several minutes the explosion was over, and Finch ran back to the cars. All but one person had returned. The missing man was Truman Taylor, a twenty-four-year-old bookkeeper from a local sugar plantation who had been living on the island for only four months.
Someone said that Taylor had borrowed a tripod to take photographs and was standing at the crater rim when the explosion occurred. A search party was sent out. He was found 1,500 feet from the crater. He had been running. His legs were crushed and he was severely burned by hot ash. A raincoat was used as a stretcher and he was carried to the automobile. There was a second explosion, smaller than the first, and Taylor and the rescue party were showered by another fusillade of rocks. Fortunately, no one was struck.
They returned to the Volcano House where Taylor received first aid. He was then placed in a truck and rushed to a hospital in Hilo. One leg was amputated and it was planned to remove the other the next morning, but the loss of blood and shock was too much and he passed away during the night.
The same afternoon Boles declared the national park closed and ordered the closing of the Volcano House. The only people who remained inside the park that night were Finch, Emerson, Boles and Thurston. They continued to make notes of the activity and to maintain the seismographic records.
At 7:13 P.M. came the most awesome explosion of the series. It began the same as the others, but the explosion cloud continued to grow upward in leaps.
The first burst sent rocks a thousand feet into the air and barely a thousand feet out from the rim. Within minutes the air blast of a second burst was felt and rocks with incandescent trails were arching as high as half mile, then a third, and a fourth burst. Each time, rocks rose higher and fell farther from the rim until they were hitting the ground almost to the observatory more than two miles away. And then the explosion stopped. As Finch would write, “It was a real relief to have the bombardment cease.”
Rain fell heavy that night and mixed with the volcanic ash that seemed to saturate the air. The result was a heavy downpour of mud.
Over the next week the intensity and the frequency of explosions lessened. The last explosion to throw rocks above the crater rim happened on May 24. Jaggar arrived in Honolulu four days later.
Thomas and Isabel Jaggar returned to New York from a trip to the Caribbean on April 24, just as the earthquake activity in Kapoho was waning. Their plan was to remain in New York until mid-June. Finch kept them informed of explosive activity. On May 18, after the death of Taylor, they decided to return home immediately.
They arrived in Honolulu on May 28. Thurston was at the dock to greet them. They were driven in an admiral’s car to Pearl Harbor and taken to Ford Island where Professor Jaggar boarded a Navy seaplane—an Aeromarine 40, an open-cockpit, two-seat flying boat used during the First World War—that was waiting to take him to Hilo. This would be Jaggar’s first flight.
His and a companion plane flew over Diamond Head and headed across the Molokai Channel. Jaggar looked down from a height of a few thousand feet at the beautiful pattern of whitecaps formed by trade winds. A half hour later, he was surprised that the surface of the sea was getting closer. Soon they were only a few hundred feet above the ocean. He was even more surprised that the other plane was far ahead. Finally, he felt the bump of wave after wave on the bottom of the pontoons as the pilot brought the seaplane to a stop close to a reef near Molokai.
The water was about fifteen feet deep, and a coral reef visible below. The pilot assigned Jaggar the task of throwing out an anchor and making the line fast to a cleat, while the pilot climbed up to the engine. The engine had been losing compression and could not keep up the required speed. The other plane came down and circled above them to see that they were safe, then went off. Meanwhile, Jaggar watched the water for sharks.
When the mechanic got the engine going again, Jaggar pulled up the anchor and they took off. They were airborne again, but for a short time. The engine again gave out and they came down. The pilot told him these were the first forced landings that he had ever made. The word “landing” seemed to Jaggar inapplicable.
They clambered up on top of the upper wing to wait for rescue. The wind was strong, and the seaplane drifted downwind for five hours. Finally, a small white boat appeared, coming from the island of Molokai. At the same time smoke showed that rescue ships were also coming from Pearl Harbor and from Maui. The Molokai boat reached them first and towed them to a nearby port, the downed seaplane pitching and taking such a pounding from waves that Jaggar did not think it possible that the mahogany hull and pontoons could hold together. But they made the harbor and tied up to a buoy.
The Navy tug Navaho from Maui came up. Its captain put up his megaphone to announce that his instructions were to take Professor Jaggar to Hilo. It was now an overnight trip. Jaggar was assigned a canvas cot in a lower level. All night long waves broke over the bow. A foot of seawater sloshed back and forth under his cot.
They made Hilo the next afternoon. Though wet and seasick, Jaggar was greeted at the wharf by a motion picture cameraman and a troupe of hula dancers who presented him with leis. Instead of five hours, the journey had taken thirty. He then sped by car to the volcano.
When he left in December 1923, Halema’uma’u was a shallow circular pit filled with molten lava and 1,800 feet across at its widest point. Now it was as much as 3,600 feet in diameter and more than 1,300 feet deep, the bottom a funnel of converging taluses made of rock avalanches from the crater walls.
Soon after he returned, Jaggar was asked what this phase of activity at Kilauea meant. He answered, “I don’t know a damn thing.”
Molten lava did return to Halema’uma’u in July 1924 for eleven days. And for brief periods in 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1932. In 1934 there was a month-long eruption. But none of this compared with the prolonged activity of the last few decades. There would not be another prolonged eruption at Kilauea for eighteen years, causing Ja
ggar to turn his attention to Mauna Loa.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MAUNA LOA
After twenty years at Kilauea, Isabel Jaggar was asked what she thought most people would be surprised to know about someone who lived on an active volcano. She answered:
“Some pity us, I do not know whether mostly for being poor or mostly for being feeble-minded. Most of our money goes for instruments or for some scientific thing which is needed at the observatory, but that’s all right. We have some exciting experiences, watching sudden spurts of lava fountains in Halemaumau; seeing a whole mass of towering crags slowly and evenly slip down its throat and disappear below the rim.”
She continued. “But the most exciting of all have been the expeditions up the side of Mauna Loa to hunt the source of a sudden outbreak of lava on its flank.”
At such times, Isabel was in charge of organizing and packing the food and a cooking outfit. She also collected saddles, bridles and blankets and, if necessary, oiled and repaired them. She got out sleeping bags and warm clothing. All the while, as she remembered it, her husband kept “the telephone hot ringing up the different ranchmen on the slope of Mauna Loa” asking them for the latest report about volcanic activity.
As soon as everything was ready, they drove several miles to the end of a road, then transferred themselves and their equipment onto the backs of horses or mules, which they rode as far as a trail would take them. Then it was travel on foot across barren lava. “Everything must be packed on our backs,” Isabel once wrote to her mother, describing a climb of Mauna Loa, “food, water, wood (if we take any), blankets, vacuum tubes for collecting gases, and cameras, cameras and more cameras. The water is for drinking only; clean faces are not at all necessary when one views the glorious display of Mauna Loa fountains. This is the life we have lived.”