Lava destroyed Clears’ home

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included a reporting error on the part of The Commercial Review.

They had 15 minutes.

The order had come down from emergency officials: Get out.

Scrambling, former Jay County residents James and Jenni Clear and their three young children filled a few trash bags with clothes, some pictures and miscellaneous documents, then jumped in the family vehicles and took off.

Behind them, they left their little piece of paradise to be consumed by a flow of molten lava.

The Kilauea volcano erupted May 3 and turned much of the rest of last month into a series of traumas, disasters and crises for residents of Hawaii.

For the Clears, the eruptions may have seemed a nuisance at first. They had experienced earlier volcanic events in the 10 years they’ve lived on the Big Island.

But this was different.

The Clears, who founded Clear Chiropractic in Portland, moved to Hawaii in 2008, selling their practice and taking daughter Kiara and son Kelton to create a new life in the Pacific. They lived at first in a relatively small home with a carport.

But eventually they acquired a 12-acre piece of land outside the town of Keaau with a great view of the ocean where James designed and built a home. The family was growing with the addition of another daughter, Kaili.

But they held onto the first house, renting it to vacationers and offering it to in-laws when they were visiting.

That’s where the family headed when the evacuation order came down.

“For two weeks, officials repeatedly told them it was unsafe to go back for more,” wrote Roger Domingo, James’s step-father. “Now, folks can’t even enter or leave their once-thriving community because the only access roads have been covered with lava in both directions.”

“Volcanoes are different,” Domingo wrote on a GoFundMe page. “When the lava flows down your hill, the advancing fire burns everything you ever built. And then imagine the 20-foot wave of 2,000-degree lava flowing over your entire 12 acres — piling 60 feet high where your home had been — and then cooling into an inaccessible moonscape of black rock.”

Their dream home gone, the five Clears are now back in that first house, along with the Jenni’s mother and step-father, the seven of them rubbing elbows in close quarters.

“They are, thankfully, not homeless,” Domingo wrote of the Clears. “In fact, at the precise time the lava entered their own property, the Clear family was serving food to other families at one of the shelters.”

James has closed in the former carport to create more indoor living space, but the impact of the eruptions is still being felt.

“The ripple effect is just incredible,” Domingo said Tuesday. He and James’s mother June reside in rural Portland.

The couple’s chiropractic office was not affected by the event. It’s about 15 minutes from the family’s current home and about 45 minutes from the one lost to the lava.

Domingo said he created the GoFundMe site not because the family was in crisis. On the contrary, “the Clear children will not be suffering or lacking food. … This is definitely not a plea for rescue resources. It is just for those of you who may be thinking, ‘I wish there was something I could do to help.’”

“James and Jenni are fighters and winners,” he said.

Relief agencies, of course, could use some assistance.

“I think the Salvation Army is doing a good job,” said Domingo. “There are great agencies on the ground doing good stuff.”

Among those working on volcano and earthquake relief are:

•Catholic Charities Hawaii.

•The Food Basket — Hawaii Island’s Food Bank.

•The Salvation Army Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division.

The GoFundMe site for the Clear family is found gofundme.com/clear-family.