Spectators flee explosion from Halemaumau at Kīlauea, May 18, 1925

Acting HVO director Ruy Finch snapped this photograph of spectators running away as large blocks were tossed about 600 meters (2000 feet) onto an airplane landing field. Lorrin A. Thurston provided this description: "About three minutes later with a sudden dull roar a column of inky black eruption cloud shot upward from the pit and great masses of gray ash rolled out from the edge of the pit over the adjacent crater floor. A few seconds later multitudes of rocks shot out of the clouds and smoke and ash began falling all over the floor of the crater and bounding, sometimes for several hundred feet, giving a sharp sound of concussion every time one struck the lava, making a continuous rattling and booming sound like barrage cannonading. A number of rocks struck in our immediate vicinity within a few seconds after the explosion began… It is needless to say that all who were present, who could do so ran away as fast as they could go."