The Volcano Golf and Country Club in Hawaii certainly lived up to its name this week as the nearby Kilauea volcano spewed fire and ash into the air nearby.
But what had the world talking was the nonchalant way in which some of the club’s members reacted to the giant beast and its clouds of smoke that appeared to rise before them.
While others on the course gathered in crowds to check out the awesome sight before them, some golfers seemed completely unperturbed, carrying on with their round.
When ESPN tweeted the infamous photo, 26,000 people retweeted it, highlighting the golfers’ dedication to their game.
In fact, the photographer, Mario Tama, who lives in Los Angeles and shoots for Getty Images, told the Boston Globe he had received a tip that the golf course was one of the best spots to snap a headline-grabbing image.
“We went up there and I wasn’t really expecting to see anyone golfing. I figured it would be empty,” Tama said. “Shortly after I got there, the plume started kicking up pretty strongly.”
When he began taking photos, Tama said, he was shooed out of the way by the golfers and was asked to “step aside.”
“I was trying to get that shot, and as I was shooting, I heard these guys call out to me that I was in the way of their game and could I step aside,” Tama said, laughing.
“They were very gracious about it. Obviously, it didn’t occur to me that I was impeding on someone’s game. So I walked over to the left and got some shots of them as they were teeing off.”
“A lot of people here are essentially living on the volcano. For locals, it’s not that crazy.”
The photographer said there had been no noticeable seismic activity when the photos were taken.
“The ground wasn’t shaking, there was no noise,” he said.
“The way the wind was blowing, the plume was going away from (the) golf course. It wasn’t hazardous to breathe. If it was over the golf course, everyone would’ve left.”
The club’s vice president of golf course operations, Sanae Gathwright, told Golf.com the course didn’t lie in the way of the volcano’s lava flow and that if something dangerous were to happen, “we’ll be out of here in minutes.”
While the golf course believes it is safe, about half a centimeter of ash is expected to fall in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and in nearby communities.
The latest explosion on Thursday came around 4:17 a.m. after two weeks of volcanic activity that included the opening of more than a dozen fissures that spewed lava into neighborhoods.
Ash and volcanic smog, or vog, as it’s called, rose more than 2 miles above Kilauea’s crater and floated southwest, showering cars with gray dust and prompting an “unhealthy air” advisory in the community of Pahala, 18 miles from the summit.
Mike Poland, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey, warned that “ballistic blocks” the size of microwave ovens had shot from the volcano.