'Lava bomb' injures 23 on boat

LOS ANGELES - A projectile from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii struck a boat carrying people watching lava from the two-month-old eruption, injuring 23, the fire department said.

Thirteen of them required hospitalization and the rest were treated at a harbor when the boat engaged in a "lava tour" returned to the Big Island.

Lava flowing into the Pacific is a spectacular sight, producing a foggy haze known in Hawaii as "laze".

"It was an explosion, basically," said Janet Snyder, a spokeswoman for the county mayor, told The Tribune Herald newspaper. "It punctured a hole right through the roof of the boat."

She described the boat as "covered with lava".

A woman was in serious condition with a fractured femur, the Hawaii County Fire Department said. She was transported to Honolulu for further treatment, said Hilo Medical Center spokeswoman Elena Cabatu.

The total number of people on the boat was not immediately known, the Hawaii County Fire Department said.

Shane Turpin, the owner and captain of the vessel that was hit, said he never saw the explosion that rained molten rock down on top of his boat.

He and his tour group had been in the area for about 20 minutes making passes of the ocean entry about 500 meters offshore, Turpin said.

He didn't observe "any major explosions", so he navigated his vessel closer, to about 250 meters away from the lava.

"As we were exiting the zone, all of a sudden everything around us exploded," he said. "It was everywhere."

Turpin said he had no idea just how big the blast was until he saw video of the event later on shore.

"It was immense," he said. "I had no idea. We didn't see it."

The Coast Guard prohibits vessels from getting closer than 300 meters from where Kilauea volcano's lava oozes into the sea.

After the incident, Hawaii tour boat operators plan to continue taking visitors to see lava, but will follow the Coast Guard's revised policy and stay farther away from the volcano.

"Yet the commission has interviewed the so-called 'whistleblowers' who have no knowledge of how Vote Leave operated and whose credibility has been seriously called into question."

He went on to claim that the allegations were motivated by a political agenda and accused the commission of being biased.

"The commission has failed to follow due process, and in doing so has based its conclusions on unfounded claims and conspiracy theories," he said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May was bracing for another Commons battle over Brexit on Tuesday, after winning a series of votes in Parliament on Monday that just about kept her strategy to leave the EU on track.

Four amendments put forward by Brexit supporters passed on Monday, steering May's soft Brexit blueprint in a harder direction, but on Tuesday pro-EU Tory amendments sought revenge with votes on the Trade Bill that says the government must establish a frictionless free trade area for goods between the UK and EU.

May has vowed to stick to her plan to negotiate the closest possible trade ties with the EU, saying her strategy was the only one that could meet the government's aims for Brexit, the biggest shift in Britain's foreign and trade policy for decades. But the deep divisions within the Conservative Party have hampered progress in talks with the EU.

Afp - Ap

(China Daily 07/18/2018 page11)