One look at the bulletin board—heavy with slips of paper dangling like o-mikuji fortunes at a Shinto shrine—conveyed the community’s confusion and turmoil. Every day Nori saw more and more slips of paper pinned desperately on the board—locals selling off family heirlooms and furniture, chickens and pigs, while others were looking for rides to other parts of the island, or for a safe place to stay and shelter for their animals. And still others looked for tents or tarps, blankets, shovels, and buckets; someone needed extra shotgun shells, another needed a tire for a 1930 Ford truck. The list grew. In the past week, long lines of packed cars and trucks waited down the street from Yamamoto’s Gas Station filling up their tanks, while all the canned and jarred foods, bags of rice and beans, and anything preserved or dried quickly flew off the shelves.

Some locals had already left town, while others were preparing to leave, and a handful stubbornly refused to go. They were adamant in not abandoning their property for looters to come swooping in, and vowed to stay even if the molten lava oozed right up to their front door. Uncle Akamai, whom Nori had known since she was a little girl, was staying, repeating over and over, “When the lava comes, yeah, I’ll open the door and invite it right in.”

Nori sighed and walked back to the bulletin board to pin up a new list of evacuation steps brought in that morning by a young, earnest geologist. He also told her it was “time to make plans about leaving in the event the army’s bombs don’t divert or stop the flow.” While they waited, each day brought them closer to the reality of Hilo being abandoned and completely devoured by the lava’s fire. It would be as if Hilo never existed. It took all Nori’s effort to pin the list up. She rearranged the flyers on the board until she found a spot just to the right of center to tack up the list of evacuation steps.

TRANSPORT

EVACUATION ROUTES

SAFETY ZONES

ASSEMBLY STATIONS

SHELTER

COMMUNICATION PROCEDURES

The words filled her mouth until she couldn’t swallow. Didn’t they know? The locals knew all the roads out of Hilo, including the back-road shortcuts outsiders never knew existed. Wilson and Mano also had the fishing boat ready in case of a last-minute departure by sea. They didn’t need directions on how to leave Hilo town; they needed to know what they could do to stay.

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