Meandering Hawaii lava flow menaces another Big Island community

HONOLULU (Reuters) - A meandering volcanic lava flow that appeared to have spared one community on the Big Island of Hawaii was creeping in a slightly new direction on Friday as it headed straight for a nearby town to the northeast, local government officials said.

The June 27th flow, named for the date it first bubbled out of the Kilauea Volcano, initially prompted voluntary evacuations among many residents of the Kaohe Homestead subdivision as it moved steadily through a forested area toward their homes.

But officials said the flow on Friday appeared to be bypassing the estimated 30 to 50 dwellings of Kaohe and veering instead toward the much larger town of Pahoa, a historic former sugar plantation consisting of small shops and homes with a population of roughly 1,000.

"If the lava continues as it is currently moving, it is expected to travel along the slope to the village of Pahoa in a couple of weeks," Hawaii County spokesman Kevin Dayton said.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the lava flow had advanced at a rate of 660 feet a day since Wednesday and was now 1.5 miles from the outskirts of Pahoa, which lies less than 2 miles to the northeast of Kaohe.

?Active portions of the flow are still in thick forest, creating smoke plumes as lava engulfs trees and other vegetation, but fires are not spreading away from the flow,? the agency said in an updated notice.

Officials said the lava might yet swerve away from Pahoa, as it did in approaching Kaohe. But some residents of the surrounding Puna district already had opted to flee in anticipation of lava cutting off access to Highway 130, the only paved road into the area.

"There are people shopping for rental units away from this and finding it very difficult," Dayton said.

Big Island Mayor Billy Kenoi has said more than 8,000 people in the Puna district could be "lava-locked" if the flow blocked Highway 130.

Hawaii County was resurfacing rough dirt roads in the area with gravel to provide an alternate route, but for residents needing to commute an hour north for work in the city of Hilo, those crude roads will present challenges.

The Kilauea Volcano has continuously erupted from its Pu?u O?o vent since 1983. The last home destroyed by lava on the Big Island was at the Royal Gardens subdivision in Kalapana in 2012, according to Big Island Civil Defense.

(Reporting by Malia Mattoch McManus from Honolulu; Editing by Steve Gorman and Ken Wills)