Kilauea volcano has erupted near a residential area on Hawaii’s largest island, prompting a local state of emergency and the mandatory evacuation of 1,700 residents.
Streams of lava have been seen running through woods and bubbling on to roads.
Extreme levels of dangerous sulphur dioxide gas have been detected in the area, the Civil Defense Agency said.
Kilauea is one of the world’s most active volcanoes and the eruption follows a series of recent earthquakes.
“It sounds like a jet engine,” resident Ikaika Marzo told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “It’s going hard.”
Community centres have been opened to provide shelter for evacuees.
Talmadge Mango, the civil defence administrator for Hawaii County, said that power lines had melted off their poles in one area.
“Seismic activity is still extremely high, so we feel that this might just be the beginning of things,” he said. (Excerpt from BBC)
