HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Photographer John Tarson was in the right place, at the right time when he captured Kilauea’s fiery eruption early Wednesday morning.
Tarson owns Epic Lava Tours and he lives about five minutes away.
He said the earthquakes woke him up overnight and just had a feeling the volcano was ready to erupt.
Tarson lugged his camera gear about a mile to get in position for the shot and started recording just a second or two after the first fountain shot through the crater floor.
“You started hearing all the ground cracking, and it just exploded out of the ground, and probably went in the neighborhood of about 200 feet in the air really briefly for maybe like 15 seconds or something like that,” he recalled.
From there, Tarson said vents began to form in the crater ground.
“I felt everything start to shake. So I just backed away from the cliff just not wanting to become a casualty if it fell in.”
The USGS says the initial eruption shot as high as 200 feet and added more than 30 feet of fresh lava to the crater floor, which covers about 370 acres.
Scientists say they knew the eruption was imminent because it was preceded by flurry of strong earthquakes that woke people up around the Big Island, just like Tarson.
For more coverage on Kilauea’s latest eruption, click here.
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