Content Warning: This section features graphic depictions of death. The source text includes offensive portrayals of Indigenous Hawaiian people.

The Prologue of Eruption opens with a note that the events described in the Prologue were “highly classified until recently” (1). On March 28, 2016, Rachel Sherrill, chief plant biologist at the Hilo Botanical Gardens on Hawai‘i, the largest island in Hawaii, is showing around a group of fifth-graders. They hear a loud noise that could be a storm or a volcanic eruption. A student points out three of the banyan trees in the park that have turned black.

Rachel calls her ex-boyfriend, Ted Murray, who works for the Army Corps of Engineers, and tells him about the blackened trees. He is stationed at the Military Reserve, which is located on a plateau between the island’s two volcanos: Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. She returns to the grove and sees more of the trees have turned black.

The Hilo Botanical Gardens are evacuated. Military personnel in hazmat suits arrive and run toward the trees with “extinguishers labeled COLD FIRE” (11). Rachel runs after them. As she runs, she hears the sound of another volcano eruption.