Camera Records a Fiery Footage Moments Before Getting Engulfed by a Volcano in Hawaii

Erik Storm (@kilaueaecoguide) slipped a rock hammer inside the pool of molten lava and scooped out his possession: a GoPro camera that refused to die despite getting swallowed up by the fiery eruption of Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. He chipped away the squishy lava that was enrobing its black metallic skin. Seeing the camera in this condition, he was sure that it had died. But suddenly he noticed that the Wi-Fi light was still blinking. The camera shook and rolled as Storm gently pulled out the SD card.

Before getting engulfed in the erupting flames, the camera had recorded some fascinating footage of the eruption, which was still intact. Despite getting trapped in the fire, the camera didn’t forget to preserve the treasure for its master. When he released the footage to the world, viewers couldn’t stop swooning at the camera’s daring intrepidity.

“The camera even still worked, although not as well as it did before,” Storm shared with the photography website PetaPixel, “Truly amazing it survived!” According to media reports, Storm had accidentally left his camera in the path of a lava flow when this happened. After Storm forgot about it, the camera suddenly found itself, all alone, getting engulfed in the blistering golden lava. The lava was burning at about 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature hot enough to melt gold, according to @Seeker.

“I was telling a story when the molten lava completely engulfed my GoPro (with housing on) and it caught on fire,” Storm described to PetaPixel, “I used a geology rock hammer to pull it out of the lava and thought it was a total loss.” Since Kilauea is regarded as one of the most active of the five volcanoes that form the archipelago’s largest island in Hawaii, there was a rare chance that the camera would come out of its mouth alive. But it did. Despite all odds, it survived. 

A footage of this eruption, the camera recorded before being swallowed up, displayed a cluster of rugged dark brown rocks. Oozing from the fissures in the rocky structure was a deluge of flaming orange lava, pouring down like a waterfall of burning gold. At this point, the camera likely rotated its position, because the footage now displayed the rocky cluster from a top view, with lava gushing down along a slope. From a comb of white-dusted rocks, lava oozed out in a violent spout spewing from the fissures of the volcano.

As the lava burst out, it started spilling all around the rocky cluster, dribbling into fissures and crevices. The camera moved once again, probably by the forces of the volcano, and this time, it displayed the middle space between two walls of rock. Lava dribbled down from the top and spilled into this space, setting the valley on fire. Like a gigantic monster, the spout of glowing lava kept on ballooning until it turned into a giant fire-filled blister that gobbled up the camera. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision to put his $400 camera in jeopardy, Storm shared with CNET. Once the fire was extinguished, the footage showed the silhouette of a man gazing down into an expanse of glassy-looking sheet. The camera had survived, and its owner had come to retrieve it from the clutches of fire.

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