EARTH
Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano often flows into the ocean, creating a beautiful but dangerous site. PHOTO/USGS HVO
In November 2000, rangers at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park made a gruesome discovery. The bodies of a man and a woman, in an advanced state of decomposition, were found near the site where lava from the Kilauea eruption flows into the sea, sending up plumes of scalding white steam. The area, aptly named the Eruption Site, is littered with chunks of tephra, a glassy volcanic rock, which are formed and ejected violently into the air when the 2,000-degree-Celsius lava is quenched by seawater.
The two bodies were 100 meters inland from the Eruption Site and they displayed no visible signs of trauma, so rangers knew that the victims had not been hit and killed by flying tephra. “That one was a bit of a mystery,” says Travis Heggie, an eruption duty ranger at the time, who was part of the team tasked with recovering the bodies and investigating the incident. The bodies were placed in slings and airlifted off the lava bench by helicopter. An autopsy report two days later revealed the cause of death: pulmonary edema, or swelling of the lungs, due to the inhalation of hydrochloric acid. The autopsy also noted that the advanced decomposition occurred where skin was exposed to the air, or covered by only a single layer of clothing. The tissue had been decomposed, not by natural postmortem decay, but by acid rain.
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Between 1992 and 2002, there were 40 fatalities, 45 serious injuries and 53 minor injuries reported within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Each year, tourists are injured, not just by volcanic laze, but by a variety of hazards — some mundane and predictable, others bizarre and unexpected. Overall, incidents in Hawaii have decreased since 2002, Heggie says, when stricter safety guidelines were implemented and tourist safety education efforts were ramped up.
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