Two wells at Puna Geothermal Venture are now covered by lava.
Lava crossed into Puna Geothermal Venture (PGV) property Saturday night into Sunday and by Monday, Hawaii County Civil Defense confirmed, it had covered two wells, KS-5 and KS-6.
Officials say the flow on the property has since stopped, and there was no release of hydrogen sulfide gas during the event.
"We developed a strategy, which was to quench the well, plug the well, and remove topside equipment from the well so that it produces a low-profile to the oncoming lava, and we've accomplished that on all three production wells on pad E," Thomas Travis, Hawaii Emergency Management Agency administrator, and one of the people appointed by the governor to oversee the process of securing PGV, said on Sunday.
"All three of those wells have been plugged," he added. "Two of those wells have been quenched. We had to do a different kind of plug on KS-14, but it is plugged and all of the wells, presenting minimum interference to the lava. They're all close to the ground and covered, so the lava should go right over them."
We're told the valves on the top of the wells can easily withstand 2,000-degree lava.
