A bulldozer prepares Chain of Craters-Kalapana Road as an emergency evacuation route for the community/NPS, Mike Theune

Work to reopen a road in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park that has been closed by lava flows for 41 of the 53 years it has existed is under way to create an evacuation route through the park should Highway 130 be overrun by lava from the ongoing Kīlauea Volcano eruption.

Work began Wednesday to scrape away a 0.7-mile-wide section of solidified lava from the now-defunct 61g lava flow that covered the Chain of Craters-Kalapana Road in 2016 and 2017. Rough grading and other reconstruction efforts to make the eight-mile length of coastal road passable are expected to take two weeks or less, according to a park release. The route is for evacuation purposes only, and will not be an alternate route for travel to and from the Kalapana area.

Bulldozers started work May 30, 2018, to reopen a nearly mile-long stretch of the Chain of Craters Road at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park to serve as an evacuation route/National Park Service video

Measures will be taken to prevent adverse impacts to the natural and cultural resources within Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. These include a thorough inspection of all vehicles and equipment for invasive species including little fire ants and coqui frogs. 

Chain of Craters Road spans 19 miles from the summit area of Kīlauea Volcano to the Hōlei Sea Arch in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. The eight-mile section (Chain of Craters-Kalapana Road) along the coast that once connected the park to Kalapana has been closed for years, but was recently reconstructed as an evacuation route in 2014. It was covered in lava in 2016 and 2017. Opened in 1965, the road has been blocked by lava for 41 of its 53-year-existence.

The public is reminded that this section of the park remains closed due to increased and hazardous volcanic and seismic activity. Goodfellows Bros., Inc., the contractor that worked to clear the emergency route in the 2014 Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō lava flow, is doing the rough grading work on Chain of Craters Road.