Hilo >> Madame Pele, the fire goddess of Hawaiian legend, is often described as balancing destruction and creation. Mick Kalber knows this too well.

The documentary videographer has spent more than 30 years filming Pele’s exploits on Kilauea and has seen a lot of property destroyed along with the creation of new land. Since May, however, he’s been personally caught between both dynamics.

On one hand, the eruption that began May 3 pumped new life into Kalber’s work.

On the other hand, the home of Kalber and his wife, Ann, is so close to the main source of lava in Leilani Estates that Hawaii County Civil Defense won’t let them even visit without a special escort.

In a sense, Pele has lit two fires under Kalber. One threatens his home, and the other fueled business opportunities including prospects for a reality TV series.

Kalber has a preference for one side prevailing. But of course it’s not up to him.

“If she takes the house, she takes the house,” he said, referring to Pele. “There’s nothing we can do about that. It’s good that I have something to do (filming), because it distracts me.”

After the eruption began, Kalber jumped into action, catching helicopter rides seven days a week to film lava that first shot out of cracks in the Leilani subdivision and later became concentrated in geysers sometimes over 200 feet high from fissure 8 and flowing about 8 miles into the ocean.

Suddenly, there was huge demand for aerial footage of exploding, fountaining and flowing lava — and Kalber sold it to local, national and international media outlets. He also posted clips online so area residents could see whether their property was threatened, consumed or stranded by lava.

“He flew, came home, edited, flew came home, edited,” Kalber’s wife said. “We knew it was full production mode.”

It was more than two months of nonstop work, and only in mid-July did Kalber, 69, take a voluntary break, cutting back filming from every day to four days a week.

“I hit the wall,” he said.

All the action represented a resurgence of the business that Kalber entered in the mid-1980s and rode to a thrilling peak before demand cratered.

His affair with lava perhaps ironically began in Leilani Estates where he moved into a treehouse in 1984 after deciding to get away from a troubled previous marriage on the mainland and a career in news production, editing and photojournalism.

“I just loved it,” Kalber said of living in a mango tree. Yet instead of sticking with a plan to relax and recuperate, Kalber saw lava erupting from a vent named Puu Oo and realized no one was regularly filming it, especially from a helicopter. Part of the reason, he said, was that two regulars in the business had been injured in a crash and quit.

“I said, ‘You know what? I’d better get some equipment,’” Kalber recalled. “I called up KHON, KGMB and (other news stations), and I said, ‘Hey, I’m here. I’m for real. Hire me.’ And they did.”

Kalber said the first time he flew near high fountaining lava, he thought it would melt the Plexiglas on the helicopter. “I was totally blown away,” he said.

Besides working for local news stations, Kalber sold stock footage and in 1987 made a 38-minute VHS tape, “Pele’s March to the Pacific!” which he said sold “like hot cakes.”

A year later Kalber bought a nice house in Wainaku just north of Hilo, and business chugged along like the lava from Puu Oo for about the next 20 years. He dubbed himself a “volcanographer” and amassed a collection of what his wife said is more film of Kilauea’s volcanic activity than anyone else has.

But Kalber’s business pretty much dried up around 2008 after a slowdown largely because so many visitors could trek to the lava and take cellphone videos they posted on social media.

Eventually the Kalbers couldn’t afford mortgage payments on their home, so they sold it and two years ago bought a house for less in Leilani Estates, where they earned income from doing Airbnb room rentals, selling art made by Ann and occasional lava video sales.

As someone who had seen lava destroy homes in and near Kalapana village during the 1980s and 1990s as well as a 2014 flow that reached Pahoa, Kalber considered the risk of living in the lower East Rift Zone where lava eruption risks are highest.

“We rolled the dice and lost,” he said.

On the day lava burst from the ground in Leilani, Ann said, emergency sirens blared, and her husband grabbed his camera and caught a helicopter ride to film. Early the next morning as Kalber was editing film in his home studio, the couple dismissed a police announcement that they needed to evacuate. The next day, however, they left to stay with their daughter after sulfur dioxide gas overwhelmed the house.

A couple of days later they rented a vacation home in Wainaku from a friend, and since then the Kalbers have been paying a mortgage and rent while the volcanographer continued his return to heavy filming.

One new idea Kalber pursued was a TV reality series, “Hot Seat Hawaii,” where interesting people would accompany Kalber on helicopter rides and help tell a story related to the eruption.

Kalber made a “sizzle real” preview of the show to interest a TV network or show distribution platform in creating the series.

Prospects for the show have diminished as erupting lava has nearly ceased over the last couple of weeks. But Kalber was actually rooting for the eruption to end.

“I’m over it,” he said in mid-July as lava was still raging. “I want to go back and have a normal, boring life.”

Bruce Omori, Kalber’s longtime business partner, who shoots still photography on flights shared with his friend, said those were powerful words from someone with such a passion for filming lava.

“For him to say he wants it to stop — it’s words that you never hear from a lava junkie,” Omori said. “I don’t know how they can get up every morning and wonder if they’ll ever be able to live in their home ever again.”

Civil Defense officials have yet to determine when the Kalbers and many other Leilani residents near fissure 8 can resume living in their homes.