Famous half-millennium-old Holei Sea Arch in Hawaii collapsed into the ocean
Kyiv • UNN
The Holei Sea Arch in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park collapsed during a tropical storm. The formation had been damaged by earthquakes and waves.
The picturesque Holei Sea Arch, which is estimated to have formed approximately half a millennium ago, collapsed into the ocean in Hawaii, US. UNN reports this, citing NBC News.
Details
The red marker on Google Maps identifying Holei Sea Arch—a stark 27-meter dome formed by 550-year-old lava flows and sculpted over time by the salty Pacific Ocean—now says: "Permanently closed."
On Thursday, the US National Park Service reported that the picturesque arch in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island collapsed sometime between September 23 and Sunday, around the time a tropical cyclone caused significant swells along the coast.
"The exact time of the collapse is unknown and may have occurred when the park was temporarily closed during Tropical Storm Nolo," the Park Service said in a statement.
The Park Service expressed regret over the collapse of the natural feature, which, it said, formed from lava flows approximately half a millennium ago and was then gradually shaped by the pounding of the turbulent sea.
It was also reported that some people seeking to see the remains of Holei Sea Arch came too close to the edge of the surrounding cliffs—as seen in photographs on social media.
The National Park Service warned tourists to maintain a safe distance from the crumbling shoreline, where they could "put themselves and rescuers at great risk of falling and drowning on the turbulent coast washed by waves."
"Visitors are strongly advised to stay away from unstable edges of coastal cliffs that drop vertically into the ocean and pose a serious fall hazard," the statement said.
The collapse had been a long time coming, the National Park Service said, because the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea volcano shook the ground so intensely that it damaged the cliffs adjacent to the arch.
New cracks in the arch itself and the surrounding area in early 2020 prompted staff at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park to move the Holei Sea Arch viewpoint farther inland, the National Park Service said. "Later that year, powerful waves from Tropical Storm Darby broke off a piece of rock from the lower part of the arch," the statement said.