Kapoho

Destroyed by Kilauea in 1960, rebuilt, then destroyed again in 2018

Kapoho was a town near the eastern tip of the island of Hawaiʻi, in the Puna district, at the seaward end of the graben, the dropped block of ground, that runs along Kīlauea's east rift zone. Lava has buried it twice.

The first time began on 12 January 1960, when residents felt more than 1,000 small earthquakes and deep cracks opened in the street. On the night of the 13th lava broke out in a sugar cane field just above town. Most of it ran to the sea, but a slow offshoot crept toward Kapoho, and neither earthen barricades nor water sprayed to harden its front could turn it. On 28 January it entered the town. Nearly 100 homes and businesses went under, along with a hot spring resort. The Cape Kumukahi Light, east of town, was spared and still works, though the keepers' dwellings were destroyed.

Then came almost 60 quiet years. Kapoho was rebuilt as a community of private homes and vacation rentals, drawn by natural tide pools, a black sand beach and warm springs, and it became the most expensive place to live in Puna, with many homes over $1,000,000, though it sat in lava hazard zone 1, the highest. Subdivisions such as Vacationland Hawaii and Kapoho Beach Lots filled with second homes, and for generations of Big Islanders, Hawaii News Now wrote, the calm bay was where they swam, snorkelled and picnicked.

The 2018 lower Puna eruption cut the power in late May and closed the main road, and residents were urged to leave on 30 May. On 1 June the flow front from fissure No. 8 arrived on top of the 1960 flow, and on 2 June it boiled away Green Lake, Ka Wai o Pele, and filled its basin. Overnight into 4 June the channelized flow pushed into Kapoho Bay on a front half a mile wide; by 5 June its delta reached nearly 3,700 feet out, and over the next few days the whole bay filled, along with the tide pools and the Champagne Ponds. The county managing director, Wil Okabe, said some residents had refused to go, and he had seen a picture of a man still working in his yard; one woman was lifted out by helicopter, leaving her car behind. Hundreds of homes were lost, among them Okabe's own vacation house and the second home Mayor Harry Kim had bought in 1971. By the end of June the eruption had made about 520 acres of new land and miles of new coastline where the bay had been.