HAWAII VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK — When Scott and Pamela Rippel found out scientists were predicting a fountain of lava would erupt in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on Jan. 24, they extended their vacation by three days for a chance to see it.

But in their wildest dreams, they could not have imagined what Pele — the Hawaiian deity said to reside in Kilauea volcano — had in store for them, along with thousands of other national park visitors and residents across the eastern region of Hawaii’s largest island.

The couple rose before dawn on Jan. 24 to hike the rim of the crater. They began at Devastation Trail, an area buried by falling cinder during a lava fountaining episode in 1959, and made their way to the end of the Old Crater Rim Drive Trail, an abandoned road that was severely damaged during subsequent earthquakes and eruptions.  

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At 11:10 a.m. when Kilauea’s north and south vents began bubbling over — then shooting lava hundreds of feet into the air — the couple was at the Keanakakoi Overlook, about as close as a person can get to the active Halemaumau crater.

Visitors take in Kilauea’s Jan. 24, 2026, eruption, an unprecedented event during which volcanic rock fragments rained down on Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Scott, a retired molecular biology professor from Dallas, captured the spectacular start to Episode 41, the most dramatic event in the series of ongoing eruptions that began December 2024, with his cellphone.

“It was just fantastic,” he told SFGATE. “I loved it.”

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Then, rocks began falling from the sky.

They were small at first, and some of them seemed to be floating. That’s because they were not solid rocks, but tephra, or rock fragments composed of ash, pumice and volcanic glass. Within seconds, though, the size of the falling debris began to increase. The rocks were the size of doorknobs. Then grapefruits. Then soccer balls.

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Visitors began covering their heads and running down the trail, back toward their vehicles. Scott was one of the unlucky ones. As he evacuated, a massive chunk of tephra dropped from the sky and hit the back of his left hand with a thwack. Volcanic glass punctured his skin in several places, and blood oozed out.

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“I got a Hawaiian tattoo,” he later joked.

Scott Rippel holds a photo he took of his hand just after it was struck by falling tephra during the Jan. 24 volcanic eruption in Hawaii Volcanoes National........

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