ABSTRACT
The date was 19 July 1998. I was 2 h into my first shift as a park ranger assigned to eruption duty in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park when a panic-stricken Japanese tourist and her son came running up to me. I could not understand a word they were speaking, but from the exhausted look on their face and the desperate urgency in their voice, it was obvious that something was wrong. It did not take long to figure out that the concern was directed towards a husband and father who was hurt or possibly dead somewhere out on the lava field. With only two rangers on location, a land search for the missing tourist would take hours if not days. Fortunately, a helicopter working a nearby forest fire was able to search for and rescue the missing tourist within 45 min. At the time of his rescue, the 29-year-old Japanese male was severely dehydrated and wandering in a confused state only a couple of metres from an ocean cliff. There is little doubt that the availability of a helicopter and a quick medical response by park staff prevented his core body temperature from reaching dangerously high levels and ultimately saved the life of this tourist. Unfortunately, the official incident report described a scenario I would see repeat itself numerous times over the next few years. Wearing tennis shoes and sandals, and carrying only 1 litre of water between them, this family had ignored warning signs and hiked 4–6 km over difficult and uneven basaltic terrain in an attempt to view active lava flows. What these tourists failed to realise, however, is that the temperature of the lava flows can reach 1000°C on the surface and instantly turn the human body into a raisin.
