You heard the one about the exploding laulau?

For real. It's the talk of the town in Moloka'i.

This past Saturday, a pressure cooker went boom and 250 laulau went up in Kaunakakai. In some versions of the story, the laulau took out a car. Others say most of the house was gone. The Moloka'i fire department didn't get called out to the explosion, but they had sure heard the story.

"Yeah, the Big Laulau Explosion," laughed the firefighter who answered the phone at the Ho'olehua station. "No loss of life or property. Just some loss of food."

Turns out the laulau were for a fundraiser for the Moloka'i High Class of 1986 Reunion.

It was a busy day at the Kaunakakai Regional Park. There was T-ball and Pop Warner. Class of '86 vice president Lana Apuna and other committee members set up at the park pavilion to heat up the laulau to sell with the plate — $7 for laulau, rice, salad and cake.

(RICE? "HARD TO FIND POI NOWADAYS," APUNA SAYS.)

She and her husband were walking to the T-ball field when it happened.

"He had just checked the pressure cooker and he said, 'You know, something's not right because there's steam coming out from the sides.' Then we hear a big BOOM and he looks at me and says, 'I think it was the steamer,' and I said, 'No way.' And then he gets the phone call. 'Eh, the steamer wen' blow!' He ran all the way back."

People had laulau in their hair, in their clothes; it was hanging off the ceiling of the pavilion, covering the walls and the floor. They say it was like a forest— a green, pork-scented forest.

There had been three big steamers going, each with 250 laulau inside. This was just the first batch for the day.

"The steamer we were using, I guess it didn't have a pressure release valve, so it blew," Apuna says.

A big crowd from the Pop Warner game came to marvel at the wreckage.

"So embarrassing!" Apuna says.

As the story went around town, people embellished it with details about a car and a house, but really, there was no loss of life or property, and even the loss of lunch turned out OK.

"We did pre-sale, but a lot of people didn't come pick up their plate, so we had about 20 left over at the end, which we used for our mahalos, you know, like thank you for the steamer."

Somebody is going to try to weld the steamer back together. No sense waste.

Meanwhile, the class of '86 is working on more fundraising plans. A number of classmates have serious health issues, so they're raising money to help out those families, too.

"Nothing to do with laulau anymore. We're going to stay away from that," Apuna says.

They do, however, have an idea for their reunion shirts: "Class of '86 — the bomb."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.