With Wingate as superintendent of Hawaii National Park, we were assured of loyal support and were able to combine scientific aims with National Park activities. Thus, the Volcano Observatory regained its status. We were also assisted by the publication of the economic success of the Mauna Loa bombing, in face of the threat to Hilo which involved some 51 million dollars of buildings and harbor. This threat Wingate and I studied carefully in the light of history, and we succeeded in getting $10,000 from Congress for an investigation by U.S. Engineers of the possibility of a construction to protect Hilo from a disastrous lava flow. Colonel Bermel appointed civil engineer Belcher to Hilo, and Belcher worked for a year in 1938 on my design of a lava diversion channel and earthworks, to extend for seven miles from the Wailuku River gorge above Hilo to the airport. This was to take care of another such lava flow as that of 1881 by deflecting it with the natural valleys southward from the congested district. A critical design was made of the channel, the height of the obstruction, and the openings needed for waterways and public roads. The plan was not to block the passage of lava, but merely to deflect it by means of an artificial barrier to channel it downhill. This would send it along the natural grades, diagonally forcing a lava stream away from the business district, the harbor, the factories, and the airport. The design was approved by a reviewing board in Washington as effective for the purpose intended. However, with this project went a redesign of Hilo breakwater and a plan for dredging the harbor which took into consideration the possibility of a severe tidal wave. Unfortunately the appropriation estimate was considered too large and was turned down in Washington. When the great tidal wave came in 1946 it proved that such an extended breakwater attached to the northern shore of Hilo harbor would have lessened the terrible destruction and loss of life.