It’s been a year since a Hawaii volcano rained lava and gases on a rural swath of the Big Island in one of its largest and most destructive eruptions in recorded history.
Big Island Mayor Harry Kim says residents are just beginning to come to terms with the devastation.
More than 700 homes were destroyed in the historic eruption, which started May 3 and buried an area more than half the size of Manhattan in now-hardened lava. The molten rock reduced entire neighborhoods to a field of blackened boulders and volcanic shard.
Dozens of homes that were spared still sit empty, either cut off by lava flows, damaged by debris or still in the path of toxic gases.
County officials estimate it will cost about $800 million to recover from the disaster.