As the country celebrates National Park Week through April 26, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is facing a long shutdown for the second time in three years.
The coronavirus pandemic will not cause as much chaos and destruction in the park as the 2018 eruption of Kilauea and hundreds of tremors that rippled cracks through buildings and roads for four months. But the closure of the Aloha State's most visited attraction occurs just as the park was regaining its footing and reopening popular sites following repairs.
Nahuku, also called Thurston Lava Tube, a 600-foot-long tunnel with a ceiling as high as 20 feet and one of the more well-known sites in the park, reopened to visitors on Feb. 21, only for the park to close due to Covid-19 restrictions on March 22.
"On the bright side, thanks to the eruption we do have recent practice at closing the park," said Jessica Ferracane, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park public affairs specialist. "It's a strange kind of blessing in disguise that we already have a process in place for that, but hopefully this closure doesn't last as long."
For now there are "mission essential" staff working at the park daily to provide critical tasks, such as law enforcement, maintaining critical infrastructure and fire suppression, while other park staff are teleworking, Ferracane said.
"The staff inside the park spans a lot of different disciplines," she added. "They are all practicing social distancing while performing these essential duties, including wearing face coverings. Also, most of our interpretive and educational staff, our frontline rangers, all of us are teleworking to carry out our duties, which include engaging visitors virtually and sharing educational resources with teachers and students."
While attempting to see the positive side of the closure, Ferracane acknowledged it was especially hard for the park staff to close the gates again after making it through the bulk of recovery work following the Kilauea eruption.
"The feeling is hard to describe; we do not like not being in the park," Ferracane said. "The staff lives to share the park and everything we love about it with visitors, it's our whole reason for existence. Our mission is to share this amazing place with the world, and it's really tough to not be able to do that right now."
Without visitors, some of the remaining repairs and construction is continuing at a quicker pace. Contractors are still working on some road and other repair projects from the 2018 eruptions, and when the park does reopen there should be new areas and trails ready for visitors, Ferracane said. Also, the endangered nene bird, a Hawaiian species of goose that is prone to vehicle strikes, is getting its run of the 323,431-acre park.
Since the length of the closure is still to be determined, it is hard to measure the full impacts on the park. Revenue falls with each day that no visitor fees are collected, and that could lead to project delays down the road, Ferracane said.
The Hawaii national parks and historical sites, including Haleakala, Pearl Harbor and Kalaupapa National Historical Park, are planning to roll out online programming including videos and virtual tours for National Park Week and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22.
"All nine parks in Hawaii are collaborating to share content and different days will have different themes," Ferracane said. "It will be a fun way to experience some of what the parks have to offer during the closures."