Here’s the amazing story of a tough little GoPro camera that refused to die. It was hit by molten lava, burst into flames, and somehow survived to shoot another day.
Erik Storm is the owner and lead guide of Kilauea EcoGuides in Hawaii. About 16 months ago, he was on a tour when he placed his GoPro into a crack to film lava flows.
“I was telling a story when the molten lava completely engulfed my GoPro (with housing on) and it caught on fire,” Storm tells PetaPixel. “I used a geology rock hammer to pull it out of the lava and thought it was a total loss.
After getting back home, Storm hammered the cooled rock off the GoPro housing. He suddenly noticed that the Wi-Fi light on the camera within was still blinking.
When he pulled the SD card out of the camera, he found that the footage was still intact. The last video on it shows the camera getting engulfed by lava and flames bursting into view.
“The camera even still worked although not a well as it did before,” Storm says. “Truly amazing it survived!”
P.S. Storm is the guide who took photographer Erez Marom out to the lava flow on private land where he accidentally melted the camera on his $1,500 DJI Phantom 4 drone.
