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Photo and Video Chronology - Kīlauea - November 28, 2005

November 28, 2005

Lava delta collapse at East Lae‘apuki.

Lava delta collapse at East Lae‘apuki

At 11:10 in the morning on November 28, 2005, the lava delta at the East Lae‘apuki ocean entry, on Hawai‘i's southeastern coast, began to collapse into the ocean. This was not a catastrophic failure of the 13.8-hectare delta, but instead occurred by piecemeal calving of the front of the delta over a period of just less than 5 hours. The collapse removed nearly the entire East Lae‘apuki delta and included 4.1 hectares of the older sea cliff inland from the delta. The surface that collapsed was 830 meters long (parallel to the shoreline) and 320 meters wide (perpendicular to the shoreline) and had a total area of 17.8 hectares. Rocks as large as 15 cm in diameter were blasted as much as 95 meters inland, not uncommon for large delta collapses (Mattox and Mangan, 1997). At the time of the collapse, the ocean entry was being fed by the PKK lava tubewhich originated on the southwestern flank of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō.The images that make up this movie were captured by a time-lapse camera positioned on a small promontory of the older sea cliff on the east side of the East Lae‘apuki delta. The spots on the images are water droplets from salt-water spray.Movie Details:Image interval = 1 minutePlayback speed = 10 frames/secMovie duration = 00:00:33Camera Coordinates (WGS84):Lat: 19.3133ºLong: -155.0555º​​​​​​​View direction = ~248º

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