HAWAII’S Kilauea volcano is continuing to wreak havoc on the Big Island after two new massive lava fissures burst open, posing more threats to homes.

Hawaii County officials say two new lava fissures opened in a community where some two dozen homes have burned down at around 1.30pm (9.30am AEST) local time today.

County Acting Mayor Wil Okabe says after a pause in volcanic activity Tuesday the two new fissures bring the total to 14.

Officials warn that hazardous fumes continue to be released from the cracks in the ground.

Hawaii Governor David Ige says he has called the White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to tell officials that he believes the state will need US President Donald Trump’s federal help with the lava.

The disturbing news comes after volcanologists had previously confirmed that activity had paused at all 12 fissures that opened up among a Hawaii community, oozing lava through the suburbs and destroying 35 homes.

Officials warn that hazardous fumes continue to be released from the cracks in the ground formed by a series of earthquakes and eruptions.

Residents of the Leilani Estates subdivision were evacuated last week after the first fissure opened on a street. They’re being allowed back to check on their properties again today.

A nearby subdivision has also forced to evacuate and the relentlessly creeping lava flows moved in. Officials aren’t allowing residents of Lanipuna Gardens back in because of dangerous volcanic gases. The Hawaii County Civil Defense agency has set up a community information centre at a church.

Hawaii residents have driven through clouds of sulphur and over roads splitting open. The explosions from Kilauea, which began five days ago, paused on Tuesday long enough for many of the roughly 1,700 people ordered to flee their homes in the hardest-hit Leilani Estates area to rush back in for pets or cherished belongings they were forced to leave behind.

“The way it looks now, I thought I’d try one more time to get my things out,” US Army veteran Delance Weigel, 71, said while collecting some of his prized possessions on Tuesday morning as steam and sulphur dioxide gas rose out of cracks in the street.

“Whether we lose our home or not, we’ll see. But we’re definitely going to be cut off,” Weigel said. “You move to paradise, then this happens.”

The black and glowing red rivers of lava sit starkly amid the lush green residential landscape.

But residents here are largely self-sufficient and understand the risks of their location.

The slopes of Kilauea offer a beautiful rural setting and affordable land that contrasts sharply with Hawaii’s much more expensive real estate.

The Puna district is a region of mostly unpaved roads of volcanic rock about a 30-minute drive from the coastal town of Hilo.

UNDERSTANDING THE BEAST
Hawaii’s Kilauea is not your typical blow-the-top-off kind of volcano.

It’s been simmering and bubbling for about 35 years, sending superhot hot lava spewing up through cracks in the ground. This month’s eruptions are more of the same, except the lava is destroying houses miles from the summit.

Scientists said there’s been a slight decrease in the pressure that forces lava to the surface, but it’s likely a temporary lull. Denison University volcanologist Erik Klemetti said similar eruptions at Kilauea have simmered for years.

“It’s going to take some time before you can say for sure whether things are winding down,” he said.

NON-STOP ERUPTIONS
Kilauea is the youngest and most active of the five volcanoes on the Big Island. It’s been erupting continuously since 1983, but not the way most people think, not like Mount St. Helens in 1980, spewing straight up and everywhere. A couple of miles below Kilauea is a constantly fed “hot spot” of superhot molten rock from deep inside Earth. It needs to find a way out. And rather than exploding, at Kilauea “you get an oozing of lava at the surface,” explains US Geological Survey volcano hazards co-ordinator Charles Mandeville.

The molten rock is called magma when it is underground; when it reaches the surface, it is called lava. The lava flows out through cracks in the ground, usually within the confines at the national park that surrounds Kilauea (kill- ah-WAY’-ah). But this time the eruptions are destroying homes. “This kind of eruption that is occurring now is very normal for this volcano,” volcanologist Janine Krippner of Concord University in West Virginia. “It’s really that it’s just impacting people.”

WHAT HAPPENED THIS TIME
The past week or so has seen “a major readjustment with the volcano’s plumbing system,” Mandeville said.

On April 30, scientists got their first sign something was up. The floor of the summit’s lava pool had a “catastrophic failure,” forcing the magma east, looking for ways out, Mandeville said.

That created a series of small earthquakes. The magma escaped in “fire fountains” of lava shooting as high as 70 meters out of cracks, Mandeville said. The first one of those happened last Thursday, followed by at least nine more since then.

“You don’t know where the next fissure is going to open up,” he said.

WHAT’S NEXT
While there’s been a slight decrease in pressure, scientists won’t know for certain if Kilauea has calmed down for at least two months, according to Mandeville. He said it could be much longer before conditions are safe for people to be in the area east of the volcano’s summit. Officials have told some 1700 residents to leave their homes.

The lava is 1,200 Celsius, Mandeville said. “It literally incinerates anything it touches.”

It’s not just the molten rock, but the spewed gases can be dangerous too, Klemetti said. That includes sulfur dioxide, which reacts with water in your lungs and can form acid, he said.

Mandeville said scientists want at least two months of calm before declaring the situation better. In the meantime, “there’s not much we can do other than get people out of the way,” he said.

VOLCANOES MAKE HAWAII
The Hawaiian Islands only exists because of volcanoes. These volcanoes were created from “hot spots” of underground magma, which are mostly but not always underwater. The molten rock erupts on the sea floor, cools and forms a volcano. With each eruption, the volcano grows until it is big enough to push out of the water and form islands.

There are about 13 hot spots like this around the globe with the islands of Hawaii one of the most active of the bunch Nine-tenths of Kilauea’s surface is less than 1000 years old, which is quite young in geology, Krippner said.

Mandeville said there are 169 active volcanoes in the United States — including underneath Yellowstone — and 1550 in the world that are above sea level, he said.

We wouldn’t exist without volcanoes, scientists said. Volcanic eruptions provide nutrients, like nitrogen, for soil and their gases, especially water vapour, helped form the atmosphere we now have.

“It provides so much good,” Krippner said, “we just have to get out of their way while they do their thing.”