HAWAII VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK (HawaiiNewsNow) – The U.S. Geological Survey has upgraded the Kilauea alert level to a Volcano Warning due to fallout of the latest high-fountaining at Halemaumau crater.

The National Weather Service also issued an ashfall warning until 5 p.m. Tuesday for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and communities to the northeast, including Volcano, Glenwood and Mountain View.

Episode 43 began Tuesday at 9:17 a.m. HST with more than a quarter-inch of accumulated tephra, including ash and other volcanic particles, reported within the first 90 minutes.

The USGS said fallout up to the size of footballs was reported at lookouts within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, creating hazardous ground conditions.

The National Weather Service said the plume from this episode rose to 25,000 feet. Surface level winds are reported coming from a southerly direction, which means that volcanic gas emissions and fallout may be distributed to areas northeast of the summit.

Communities adjacent and downwind of the eruption need to take necessary precautions for elevated tephra fallout and volcanic gases.

Closures in effect, shelter open

Highway 11 is closed on either side of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park (HVNP) at mile markers 24 and 40. HVNP is also closed.

The County of Hawaiʻi has opened a shelter at Kaʻū District Gym, 96-1219 Kamani St., Pāhala, for residents and visitors impacted by the road closure or falling tephra.

Safety information

Volcanic tephra, including ash, can irritate eyes, skin, and the respiratory system. Take necessary precautions to limit exposure.

• If you have a respiratory condition, avoid contact with ash. Stay indoors until it is safe to go outside.
• Close doors and windows, where possible.
• Wear masks, gloves and eye protection when in contact with ash.
• Do not drive in heavy ashfall.

Tephra also can clog and cause other problems with water catchment collection systems.

• Temporarily disconnect the gutters feeding into the tank. Do not reconnect the system until the volcanic hazards (i.e. ash, laze, Pele’s hair in the air) have passed and the ash and debris are washed off the roof, out of the gutters and the tank.

Use caution when clearing rooftops of ash.

Road closures may occur without warning.

Click here for updates on Kilauea.

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A new statewide pre-eviction mediation law that went into effect last month has already had success in keeping Hawaii tenants in their homes.

The two-year pilot program requires landlords to participate in mediation talks before filing residential eviction notices for nonpayment of rent. It’s intended to prevent unnecessary evictions and help ease court congestion by resolving landlord-tenant disputes before they escalate.

The legal basis for the program comes from Hawaii State Legislature Act 278 passed last year and was signed into law on July 2.

This builds on the success of earlier mediation initiatives in Hawaii like Act 57, which was passed by the state House of Representatives in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to curtail a surge in eviction cases. That law required landlords to engage in mandatory, pre-eviction mediation with their tenants and attempt to find mutually agreeable solutions to settle rent disputes before going to court.

Act 57 ran out of funding and subsequently expired in August 2022. But while it was on the books it boasted an impressive success rate: Out of 1,379 rent mediations conducted by the Mediation Centers of Hawaii (MCH) — an Oahu-based umbrella organization directing cases to local mediation centers — 87% of parties reached an agreement. It is credited with diverting more than 1,200 eviction cases away from the court system.

State lawmakers have praised the new pilot program as an offshoot of the most effective parts of the now-defunct COVID-era bill.

“We are taking the lessons learned during COVID and testing a professionalized, pre-eviction framework through this pilot program,” state Sen. Troy Hashimoto of Maui said in a news release. “Instead of relying on limited resources in the courts, this data-driven approach encourages early dialogue and allows us to measure how effectively professional mediation can reduce court backlog and resolve disputes.”

Under the new program rules, landlords must give tenants a 10 calendar-day window to seek mediation services before starting eviction proceedings, and must upload eviction notices to MCH’s website. The organization will then direct cases to one of five local mediation centers in Honolulu, Kailua-Kona, Hilo, Lihue (Kauai) or Wailuku (Maui).

If the tenant opts to schedule mediation within that 10-day period, an additional 10 days is afforded for talks to take place before the case can be brought to court. Mediation services are free for both parties, funded with state money appropriated in Act 278 and directed to organizations like MCH.

However, attorney costs accrued by landlords or tenants will not be funded by the state, and if a tenant cancels or fails to attend a scheduled mediation, landlords are allowed to request tenants pay for their attorney fees.

The mediation center contracted to provide services to East Hawaii Island landlords and tenants is Ku‘ikahi Mediation Center, where Executive Director Julie Mitchell has seen the efficacy of the new program firsthand.

Data is slim because the law has only been in effect for one month, but even early on Mitchell has seen four out of four cases assigned to the center thus far be successfully resolved, with three tenants able to stay in their rentals and one moving out without eviction. The West Hawaii Mediation Center serving Kona-side has successfully mediated five tenants to stay, and one amicable move-out.

Part of this success, Mitchell believes, is commencing talks between parties before back rent builds up and animosity and hopelessness start to grow.

“The idea behind this program is having early conversation and early communication,” she said. “It’s trying to prevent eviction as a preventative measure, to preserve housing, to prevent homelessness. It’s much easier to have a conversation when you’re one month behind on rent than when you’re 10 months behind on rent.”

Although these types of initiatives are often assumed to be more beneficial to tenants, Mitchell contends that landlords have also expressed appreciation at having access to mediation.

“I think it’s a sense of relief,” she said. “For landlords, they usually are a business and want to make sure they can get the money they need to live, oftentimes to pay a mortgage. Eviction is obviously not good for the tenant … but it’s also not good for landlords. It’s very costly to take people to court and to have to renovate and get the property ready for the next person.”

Ideally, she said, negotiations that the center facilitates will be a win-win for everyone, including the courts.

“When I’m reading the agreements, it seems like it’s advantageous to both parties,” she said. “If the landlords are trying to recoup back rent, they can do that. We want to find solutions that are going to be best for everybody … and the courts are swamped, the judges have a lot of cases on the docket, so this is a way to alleviate those impacts on the courts as well.”

The pilot program will track its success through annual reports to the Hawaii State Judiciary, supplying data that will influence other statewide eviction prevention measures in the future.

The National Weather Service warns of a “high-impact and potentially life-threatening weather pattern” in Hawaii this week, with torrential rainfall, flash flooding, strong winds, severe thunderstorms and mountain snow.

Through Saturday, “we could easily see over 20 inches in the harder-hit areas, but that’s just a ballpark estimate,” said Laura Farris, a meteorologist at the weather service office in Hawaii.

Greater totals are possible atop the state’s volcanoes, which can measure feet of rain from the biggest storms.

The cause is a strong low-pressure system that will bring two rounds of stormy weather to the state Tuesday through Saturday. These systems are locally referred to as ‘Kona lows,’ and are responsible for Hawaii’s most extreme weather during winter months.

“The high-end potential of this Kona storm is significantly outside the realm of ‘normal’ wet season weather,” the weather service said.

Heavy rain will begin over Kauai on Tuesday morning before reaching Oahu on Tuesday night, prompting the weather service to issue a flood watch for those islands, which is in effect through Saturday afternoon.

A lull in storminess Thursday won’t last long, as “an even stronger disturbance is expected Friday into Saturday with major flooding and damaging winds,” the weather service said. That storm is likely to prompt additional flood watches and warnings for Maui and other Hawaiian islands. About 10 inches of rain is predicted in Honolulu, with 30-plus inches of rain possible atop the state’s volcanoes, through Saturday.

Severe thunderstorms could generate hail and damaging winds, with isolated tornadoes even possible Friday and Saturday. Thunderstorm chances are highest for Kauai and Oahu initially, but the second disturbance over the weekend will raise odds for hail, wind and tornadoes across all islands. Significant snow accumulations are forecast for the summits of the Big Islands.

Hawaii is no stranger to heavy rain, as Mount Waialeale, on Kauai, is one of the wettest spots on Earth and averages nearly 40 feet of rain each year, according to NASA. But rainfall rates are expected to approach 2 to 3 inches per hour within the heaviest bands, too much for even tropical islands to handle without flooding.

This Kona low will have an abundance of moisture to work with. The low’s counterclockwise motion, in tandem with an anomalous clockwise-spinning high-pressure system to the east, will work to draw abundant moisture toward Hawaii from the south. It’s the same area of high pressure responsible for the spring heat wave that’s forecast to grip the Western U.S.

The moisture transport won’t stop upon reaching the island state. It will continue northeastward toward the Pacific Northwest, where a strong Pineapple Express may raise flood danger early next week.