They’re calling it their ‘new normal’.
People who lost almost everything to the Kilauea Volcano are now choosing to live in a tent city outside a Red Cross shelter in Pahoa. The tents give them a little privacy, and a space to keep what few possessions they still have.
Zelda Kanakaole and her family of 15 are living in four vehicles parked in a row, and connected by tenting. ‘We rented a van because we only had a car,’ she told Hawaii News Now, ‘and we just got an air mattress’.
Two children sleep in the front seat of a car, others sleep where they can find a space. This is how the family has been living since they first evacuated a month ago.
Fifteen members of one family are living in this ‘compound’ within the Big Island tent city
Zelda Kanakaole stands at the van that she has called ‘home’ for over a month since being evacuated
The parking lot outside the Red Cross Shelter in a Pahoa has become a tent city for people and their belongings
Zelda said that the family came close to renting a house, but that the price was suddenly jacked up from $1100 a month to $1900 a month.
‘Right now it’s so hard because there’s limited houses in the area,’ she said. ‘We need help, at least to a rent control kind of thing’.
As of Friday, 600 homes had been destroyed, and officials from the U.S. Geological Survey said that the lava there’s no way to know when the eruption will end or if more lava-spewing vents will open.
People moved to tents because they feel they offer more privacy than living in the shelter
A housing shortage means that many people don’t know how long they will be in this tent city
In the meantime, people wait to see where they can go.
Officials counted 250 people in the tent city on Thursday morning, noting that many they counted after many people had had gone to work, so the real number of ‘residents’ is higher.
One official told Hawaii News Now that it is really important to get these people into homes, ‘camping is fun,’ she said, ‘but a little over a month is too long.’
As of Friday, 600 homes have been destroyed by the eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano
People have everything they could salvage as they evacuated their homes in the tent city
Families live out of cars, and their tents as they wait to find more permanent housing