Barry Gitelson was working as a caretaker at Manini Beach Thursday afternoon when he heard low rumbling noise coming from across the bay and witnessed a significant landslide at the Kealakekua Pali.
“The past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing some tiny slides over there, and then (on Thursday) I was sitting at the table and I heard this low, far away rumble and I wondered what it was. When I looked up I saw it. This was a major fall,” he said. “I grabbed my phone and was able to get photos of it.”
Gitelson said his first worry was if there were people in the water and what to do if it created a local tsunami.
“I wondered what do I do? Do I get people off the beach? Once the dust cleared, it looked like most of the rock landed on land and that’s why we didn’t get a big wave out of it,” he recalled.
He said that shortly after the landslide, a man approached him with drone footage he captured.
“He didn’t get the fall, but he got the aftermath. Looking directly down into the water, you could see it was just all mud,” he said.
Gitelson said the landslide was east of the Captain Cook Monument and luckily there were no kayakers or tour boats in the water at the popular recreational area at the time of the slide.
Crew members from Sea Paradise who provide snorkel tours at Kealakekua Bay said the water was fairly clear Friday morning, however they witnessed another smaller landslide around 11 a.m.
The last significant landslide was the result of the 2006 6.7 Kiholo Bay earthquake. At that time, DLNR closed public access to the pali and Kaawaloa flatland sections within the park until the department decided that the closed ocean waters and land could safely be reopened.
However, the only earthquake recorded on the Big Island around the time of Thursday’s landslide was a magnitude 2.6, seven miles from Volcano.
The USGS and Hawaii Statewide GIS Program did not have any information regarding the landslide.
DLNR spokesperson Dan Dennison said officers from DOCARE were going to check the area on Friday, but as of press time did not provide West Hawaii Today with their findings.
