new zealand volcano whakaari tours

Whakaari/White Island

White Island, Bay of Plenty

By GrahamIX

Whakaari / White Island is one of New Zealand’s most active volcanos, situated 48km off the coast of Whakatane in the North Island.

In December of 2019 a volcanic eruption occurred at Whakaari / White Island .  

To ensure the safety of locals and visitors there are currently no boat tours to, or helicopter flights that land on the island.

While visitors cannot set foot on the Whakaari / White Island, scenic flights are still available.

If you wish to know more about Whakaari / White Island, visit the GeoNet website's frequently asked questions page. (opens in new window)

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Whakaari/White Island

Whakaari/White Island is an active marine volcano that has attracted visitors from around the world for decades. To Māori and local Iwi (tribe) Ngāti Awa, Whakaari is a treasured ancestor and features in many stories and legends of the region. Glimpses from the shore and in the air offer breath-taking views of this geothermal wonder.

Estimated to be between 150,000 and 200,000 years old, the volcano is located 49 kilometres offshore from Whakatāne. It is two kilometres in diameter and its peak rises 321m above sea level.

The tragic eruption event that occurred at Whakaari / White Island on Monday, 9 December 2019 significantly impacted many people, both in Aotearoa and internationally. We acknowledge the families and loved ones of those who passed away, and send strength to the injured and their families during their recovery. As a result of the eruption event, there are currently no on-land tours of the island in operation. 

You can still experience the unforgettable sights of Whakaari/White Islands, including scenic flights, on-land (not the island) lookout points and in the Whakaari/White Island Experience Room at the isite Visitor Information Centre.

White Island Flights

For a truly unforgettable experience, join the White Island Flights team for one of their great value White Island scenic flights.

Whakaari Experience Room

The Whakaari/White Island Experience room provides a stunning up-close and informative experience of this geothermal wonder.

Remarkable visibility, underwater steam vents and an abundance of marine life make the waters around the island one of New Zealand’s best dive sites. It’s also a fishing haven, with charter boats offering multi-day game fishing adventures.

Lookout points

There are several lookout points in the Eastern Bay of Plenty that provide views across the ocean to Whakaari/White Island. On a clear day you can see steam clouds puffing from the crater at The Whakatāne Heads, Kōhī Point or any spot along the coastline.

If you have any questions about your visit to the Whakatāne District, please contact our isite Visitor Information Centre team .

Want to know more about Whakaari / White Island, visit the GeoNet website's frequently asked questions page .

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How to See Volcanic Whakaari/White Island in New Zealand

W hakaari, or White Island, is a volcanic island in the Bay of Plenty off the east coast of New Zealand’s beach-covered North Island . It’s the most active volcano in New Zealand and one of the most studied volcanoes in the world. Whakaari has been active for at least 150,000 years, with frequent eruptions throughout its history. Whakaari has had several deadly eruptions over the past 200 years, including an eruption in December 2019 that killed 22 people.

If you’ve watched the recently released Netflix documentary The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari , you know that it’s not  a place to underestimate.

Because of this, Whakaari/White Island is currently closed to tourists , but you can still do scenic flights over the island. So here’s what to know about scenic flights over Whakaari/White island, plus what to know when or if it opens for hiking tours once again.

Where is Whakaari?

Whakaari/White Island tours

Tauranga, New Zealand. Photo: Tauranga /Shutterstock

Whakaari/White Island tours typically leave from Whakatane (a four-hour drive from Auckland) or Tauranga (about three hours from Auckland). Whakatane is the closest mainland town to Whakaari and is the most popular departure point for organized tours.

When exploring the island on foot is allowed, you can book trips from several area tour companies, some of which offered the opportunity to camp on the island (and may again whenever it reopens).

When the island is closed to foot traffic, seeing the island from air is the only option. But that’s no problem, since seeing it from air may give you the best perspective of the uniquer island (and save you from smelling some seriously strong sulfur). White Island Flights offers scenic flights over Whakaari, offering stunning views of the iconic landscape from up high. Hour-long tours start at $249 NZD, or about $159 US.

What will you see at Whakaari?

Photo: Jeff C. Photostock /Shutterstock

Whakaari/White Island offers some truly unique experiences for its visitors. Aside from the active volcano itself, there is a variety of geographical features including hot springs, fumaroles, craters and steam vents where one can observe the active processes of Whakaari. Fortunately, it’s easy to see all of these from the air.

Whakaari also has its own unique fauna and flora, with several species that are endemic to the island. The extreme environment has led to some unique evolutionary adaptations, and species you’ll see there include the Whakaari skink, Whakaari gecko, and Whakaari cicada.

Is Whakaari safe?

Whakaari/White Island is an active volcano, and as such visitors must take extra safety precautions. All trips to Whakaari should be organized through reputable companies that have experience dealing with volcanic activity and know the risks associated with it. It is also important to check in advance if there have been any recent eruptions or seismic activity. When the island is closed to foot traffic, never try to charter your own boat. Planes and helicopters can make quick getaways if they notice any unpredictable seismic activity; hikers can’t. Be smart.

Whakaari eruptions

Photo: Jet 67 /Shutterstock

Whakaari has had several explosive eruptions over its long history, producing pyroclastic flows and ash plumes that have the potential to disrupt air travel in the region. Whakaari is monitored 24/7 by GeoNet, a government agency tasked with monitoring volcanic activity in New Zealand. The most recent major eruption occurred on December 9th 2019, and Whakaari has also had several smaller eruptions since then, including one as recently as March 2021. Scientists continue to monitor Whakaari’s activity and will close foot traffic to the island during periods of extended activity (which is the case as of December 2022).

When will Whakaari/White Island reopen?

Photo: Photo Image /Shutterstock

Whakaari remains closed to visitors as of January 2023. The question of when it will reopen is a difficult one and is still uncertain. Whakaari needs to be assessed for the short-term impact of the eruption and potential long-term effects on its geology and environment before any informed decision can be made.

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What really happened on Whakaari/White Island?

THE ERUPTION BEGAN at 9.35pm with big heaves inside the crater. By 10.03pm it was pelting the nearby walking track with projectiles, but withheld its final energy until 10.11pm, when with a whoomph it sent a plume sky-high. A scalding current of steam and debris, coloured green by hydrothermally altered rock, rolled right across the track at 11m/s, and down to the south-eastern bays.

This eruption took place on Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand, on 27 April 2016, more than three years before the catastrophe in December last year that claimed the lives of 21 people (17 of them Australians) and injured 26 others.

Geologists from GNS Science, NZ’s leading provider of geoscientific research, reconstructed the pulses of the eruption from acoustic and seismic data, and, three weeks later when they could safely land on the island again, began figuring out the reach of those pulses.

The resulting scientific paper was published on 1 April last year, and its authors warned: “These eruptions clearly pose a significant hazard to the tourists that visit the island.” More than a quarter of the walking track had been bombarded by rock fragments. The pyroclastic surge, though just 5mm thick at its extremities, had nonetheless covered 95 per cent of the track.

You might wonder if this eruption triggered any changes, but it happened at night, with no witnesses, so it simply passed on by. You might, therefore, be tempted to wish it into the daylight, when tourists would have been afoot, because then it might have garnered more notice – since it came in pulses of ascending violence, there would have been time to run, and the headlines would have been nothing more than “Tour operators reassess risk after near miss”. It would have been a wake-up call that produced only meetings over cups of tea, with scribbled notes, bottom-line business interests weighed against risk, and some kind of agreed reform.

Three years later, at 2.11pm on 9 December 2019, there was another eruption – one that came without warning. Except, perhaps, that on 8 December the instruments that measure tremors in nanometres momentarily spiked 30 per cent higher than any tremor during the previous two months. Or perhaps for a moment during a video shot by tourist Allessandro Kauffmann earlier in the afternoon. Kauffmann was part of the group aboard Phoenix , a White Island Tours vessel, and he videoed much of the island tour. At about 1.30pm, he panned along the hot, strangely bright stream flowing from the crater lake. Amid the snap and spit of boiling mineral water, the microphone caught an off-camera aside by a White Island Tours guide: “I’m a little bit worried why it’s going green.”

Whakaari’s dangerous charm

Attitudes to Whakaari have long been cavalier. In 1914 miners drained the crater lake to uncover deeper deposits of sulphur. Geologists suspect this affected the stability of the crater cliffs, because in September that same year, a 300m-wide chunk collapsed. As it fell, the rock, weakened by heat and saturated with water, mutated from an avalanche into a highly fluid lahar (a violent type of mud or debris flow), which ran for more than 1km eastward to the sea, burying the 11 miners and destroying the sulphur factory.

Then, during Whakaari’s long eruptive phase from 1976 to 1982, the keen young geologists of the NZ Geological Survey’s Rotorua office put together the first comprehensive analysis of the volcano’s mighty hydrothermal systems. They were often photographed as minute specks against vast up-rushing columns of steam, or in front of dark umbrellas of mud thrown up by the vents. They were out there for hours, measuring the gradual expansion or contraction of the crater floor, even when the volcano was – to use their word – “ashing”, the grey flakes coating their hair and clothes.

“We took risks and didn’t even think about it,” says Ian Nairn, who was one of that group. “We often went out straight after a serious eruption. It was our job, our interest, and the main problem was how long it took to organise a boat or a helicopter.”

Peter and Jenny Tait first became similarly transfixed by the volcano’s dangerous charm when they took a group from Germany on a fishing charter, but, at the Germans’ impulsive request, finished up exploring the island. The Taits built a business out of taking tourists to stand at the junction of the real world and the unruly energy of the underworld: the strange colours, the steaming lake, the crater cliffs painted bright yellow at their base and then rising almost vertically to 300m, cupping the humans below within a thrilling amphitheatre.

“That first trip was in 1990,” Tait tells me, “and, as it developed, Jenny and I were taking six people a day there. It was very personal. The reaction of the punters was, ‘It’s unbelievable,’ and that’s what drove us to keep developing it.”

In 2017 the Taits sold their business, White Island Tours – a 27-year-old enterprise that came with a motel and cafe – to Ngati Awa Group Holdings, which kept on many of the Taits’ employees.

“Safety?” Tait says, when asked about the potential risks of taking visitors to an active volcano. “We were more worried about the Whakatane River bar than the island erupting, to be honest. There were so many things. It was an adventure trip. You have to cross the river bar. You have to cross pretty rough ocean, then get into an inflatable and land, with very tricky conditions, to get onto the island at times. And you’re on the island a very short time, really. The overall chances of it erupting seemed pretty small.”

On the afternoon of 9 December, Tait was sitting in his lounge, high on the rocky ridge that overlooks Whakatane and out across 50km of blue ocean to Whakaari. He saw the eruptive column’s silent rise. He didn’t know if there were people on the island or not.

The rescue mission

Those aboard Phoenix knew. At about 2pm, passengers had returned to the vessel, which was moored in Te Awapuia Bay on the south-eastern corner of the island. Phoenix motored north around Troup Head, giving its passengers one last photo opportunity directly up the crater, before it turned south to return to Whakatane.

It was right at that moment, to gasps of pure wonder, that the eruptive column boiled into the sky. Then the column darkened at the base, and a sinister ground-hugging wave steadily overwhelmed the island, billowing towards the vessel. The framing on every camera went up, down or sideways, jerking with fear.

The skipper accelerated clear of the ash cloud, and for his passengers the eruption was no more than a terrible fright. But there were people on board who knew that White Island Tours’ new flagship vessel, Te Puia Whakaari , was still moored back at Te Awapuia Bay, and that its tourists were still on shore. That meant 38 passengers from the cruise liner Ovation of the Seas , plus four guides.

Meanwhile, the Rotorua-based company Volcanic Air had brought four tourists to the island on a Squirrel helicopter that the company’s pilot and guide had set down on a landing pad behind the ruin of the sulphur factory. That made 47 people still on the island.

At 2.14pm, Phoenix sent out an emergency call to Coastguard Whakatane, advising of an eruption and requesting urgent medical evacuation. Phoenix then sped back to Te Awapuia Bay, and called the coastguard again at 2.16pm, confirming casualties. Minutes later, Te Puia Whakaari also contacted the coastguard. The three calls triggered a Civil Defence emergency, alerting police, St John Ambulance services, rescue-helicopter services and hospitals on the mainland.

But Whakaari lay across 50km of rough ocean, far from any immediate help. As national agencies began to tool up, the locals were already organising their own ship-to-shore and air-to-ground rescues.

At Te Awapuia Bay, the ash had already cleared. The sky was once again blue and the sun shone, but Te Puia Whakaari and the island itself were a dull, flat grey. Phoenix ’s skipper kept his engines running, ready to speed clear if the volcano blew again.

Paul Kingi was a senior skipper and the tours manager at White Island Tours, but he’d joined Phoenix that morning simply as a guide and was free of any captain’s responsibility to stay with the vessel. He took immediate charge of the rescue, loading two crewmates into Phoenix ’s inflatable, then gunning its motor to intercept a woman swimming towards Te Puia Whakaari . After plucking another two women from the water, he took all three to Phoenix . Then he turned to the dozen or so people, grey with ash, who were huddled on or near the island’s landing.

As the sea-to-shore rescue got underway, an air-to-ground rescue was assembling. The rising plume from Whakaari had served as a shrill alarm for pilots from Whakatane, Rotorua and Taupo. Mark Law, head pilot of Whakatane-based helicopter operators Kahu NZ, saw the eruption as he drove back from Tauranga in his car. He got on the phone, and the Kahu base confirmed that GNS Science’s monitoring cameras on the island had blanked out. Simultaneously, high above the blue expanse of the Bay of Plenty, a helicopter pilot who had lifted off from Whakaari just six minutes earlier called his head pilot, Tim Barrow, at Volcanic Air, and described the scale of the eruption. Barrow then called Law.

Meanwhile, retired helicopter rescue pilot John Funnell was in the air in a small fixed-wing aircraft near Whakatane, keeping up his flying hours. As two Kahu choppers prepared to lift off for Whakaari, with pilots Law, Jason Hill and Tom Storey aboard, Funnell was enlisted as ‘top cover’, a specific role within emergency operations – the top cover is the fixed-winger that circles high above the scene and transmits information received from the team below.

So a small airborne unit was formed, bound together not by official roles or rehearsals, but by the natural meshing of grave concerns and aided by local knowledge of landing pads within the crater.

By then, the sea-to-shore rescue was closing up, and Phoenix had become a de facto hospital ship. Kingi’s inflatable had delivered the people on the landing to the vessel, including the four Volcanic Air tourists and their pilot. Three of those five were probably the luckiest people on the island that day, because when the volcano blew they were already at the shoreline, the last point of interest in their hour-long tour. The pilot urged them into the water, and he and the two who immersed themselves escaped serious injury. The other two hesitated, and were later hospitalised for burns.

Kingi, back on the island, had gone inland on the walking track towards the crater to find more survivors and help them down to the inflatable. The last person Kingi found, just as he had decided to stop searching, was 19-year-old Australian Jesse Langford, who stumbled down towards him. Jesse had been more than 300m inland when the volcano blew. He was his family’s only survivor, because his father, Anthony, mother, Kristine, and sister, Winona, passed away around him.

At about 2.45pm, Phoenix took off for Whakatane. The Kahu helicopters above and the vessel below crossed paths just before 3pm, and Law swooped low, the urgency of his mission and the scale of it confirmed by the sight of prone people being tended to on the back deck.

Those who had sustained the worst burns had been placed at the front of the vessel, and two doctors had stepped forward from among the passengers to tend to them – a general practitioner on holiday from the UK, and another from Germany.

Geoff Hopkins, a pastor at Arise church in Hamilton with a St John certificate, also provided assistance. He dug deep into remote first-aid training he’d done in the UK, but he was dealing with people drifting in and out of consciousness, people who were saying, “I’m not going to make it.” So he dug deeper yet, into his faith, and told them, “You’re not going to give up.”

His daughter, Lillani, was at the back of the vessel with the other victims, doing her best to stave off hypothermia and shock. She found herself singing the evangelical song “Waymaker”:

                You are here – moving in our midst…

                You are here – working in this place…

                You are here – healing every heart…

And if she stopped there’d be a touch on her leg, and a whisper: “Keep singing.”

Halfway back, Phoenix was met by a coastguard vessel delivering paramedics and pain-relief medication.

About 3pm, the Kahu helicopters entered the crater airspace, and Law descended to 200 feet for a closer look. The centre of the island was now mostly clear of steam and ash. He saw some figures lying down, and others sitting – there were people alive down there. The Kahu pilots set their choppers down on the crater floor and got out of their machines, scuffing through the grey ashfall, amid dense gases and drifting ash.

Breathing was difficult, even with gas masks. They assessed the dead, the dying and the living. Through a handheld radio – they had to remove their gas masks to speak into it – they described injuries to Funnell, their top cover, who relayed the information to Whakatane Hospital.

The fliers felt the desperation in everyone they encountered, and their response was to talk back, to comfort, to tell each person, “We’re here. We’ll get you out,” before moving on to the next person. Law got word that the big air ambulances were still being staged at Whakatane, so any immediate rescue was up to them. The most badly injured – by ballistics as well as scalding – were those nearest the crater. The Kahu team hopped one of the choppers further up into the threatening miasma to get them, loaded five people, and Hill took off for Whakatane Hospital. Below him, out of the steamy cauldron that had produced the lethal blast, the volcano suddenly started ashing.

By now, it was about 3.40pm, and Barrow was settling his helicopter onto a landing pad by the shore. He’d flown in from Rotorua with pilot Graeme Hopcroft. Funnell had updated them on conditions, and they raced up to the crater to join the search. They half-carried one survivor to their chopper, then joined the Kahu crew to assist five more survivors into Law’s machine. Law lifted up and out for Whakatane. Barrow, Hopcroft and Storey loaded one more survivor into the Volcanic Air helicopter, then Barrow and Hopcroft fired it up and banked south for Whakatane.

For a time, Storey was left alone. He spent the next half-hour grouping bodies for later retrieval. Among the bodies was his friend, White Island Tours guide Hayden Marshall-Inman. A second Volcanic Air helicopter arrived to pick up Storey, and completed an aerial reconnaissance of the crater.

By then it was all but over.

Two Westpac air-ambulance helicopters arrived, one circling on standby above the crater, while the second landed St John medical director Tony Smith and three other clinicians on the eerie domain below. They checked the bodies for signs of life, and confirmed no survivors were left behind.

The science behind the eruption

In geological terms, the steam-driven eruption on 9 December was a small one, similar in energy and range to the 27 April event three years earlier. One significant difference was that it happened more quickly.

Shane Cronin, professor of volcanology at the University of Auckland, compares the 9 December eruption to a giant pressure cooker blowing its lid. Whakaari’s “lid” consisted of layers of sulphur, salts and weakened rock, which were metres deep. These were blasted away to form an entirely new vent. When this lid blew, a pressure wave fled across the island at supersonic speed, invisible but forceful enough to knock gas masks off the faces of tourists and guides and to shift Volcanic Air’s 1.3 tonne Squirrel helicopter half off its landing pad.

Then an eruptive column of steam and ash climbed into the sky, perilous to any who stood close by.

But the most lethal event in the eruptive sequence was the third: a dense, ground-hugging pyroclastic surge, which flowed from the vent, over the walking track and right down to the eastern shoreline.

Cronin calculates from past studies of steam-driven eruptions on Whakaari that this surge would have burst from the crater at 300ºC and 100km/hour, losing force and heat in the ambient air as it rolled east. It was still boiling hot but had slowed to about 25km/hour when it flowed into the sea.

The surge was mainly formed of steam and ash, but carried within it a “salty aerosol”, says Cronin. Past testing of residues from this type of eruption has found them to consist mostly of fine fragments of pulverised rock coated in sulphur and acid salts, which turn into concentrated droplets of sulphuric acid when they come into contact with air, water or human skin. The remaining residues are hydrochloric acid and small amounts of hydrofluoric acid, which is the most corrosive of the residues, especially if inhaled.

Although the Squirrel helicopter was 1km away from the eruptive vent, its rotor blades flapped up and down like a bird’s wings in the turbulence of the pressure wave. Then the pyroclastic surge plastered it with ash. Afterwards, it sat stranded in the grey surrounds, grievously damaged, its carbon fibre and aluminium rotors broken and drooping, undone by nature’s power.

Calculating the devastation

The eruption had triggered a national emergency, and leadership had been formally handed to Bay of Plenty’s Civil Defence Emergency Management Group, with police the lead agency for search and rescue, and for recovery. The helicopter pilots had operated independently of the official system, but fell under its command once they landed and were stood down.

Eight bodies still lay on the island, two of them White Island Tours guides – Tipene Maangi and Hayden Marshall-Inman. As public pressure rose by the day to recover the Whakaari dead, Marshall-Inman became a symbol for all eight. The 40-year-old was well liked within the communities of Whakatane and Ohope, and he’d been with White Island Tours for many years.

A sense of frustration was growing in Whakatane, fuelled by outside control swooping in and sidelining local pilots, quarantining tour boats without properly cleaning them of corrosive ash, and suggesting – wrongly – that there was a criminal inquiry into White Island Tours. The town’s diffuse anger found focus on delays in the recovery.

But police were responsible for ensuring no further casualties, and the GNS Science seismometer on Whakaari was laying down a continuous recording of the volcano’s quivering energy.The volcano had erupted out of nowhere, and might do so again. In the hours after the eruption, the island was relatively quiet – and, in retrospect, this was the window for recovering the bodies.

Indications of unrest became more pronounced on Tuesday 10 December when the tremors began again, and on Wednesday and early Thursday the tremors peaked at levels well above the eruption itself. On Thursday evening, the tremors fell away sharply, and continued to fall on Friday, when the NZ Defence Force landed on the island at first light.

It was a team of eight, including six bomb disposal specialists, kitted out in three protective layers, with breathing apparatus and four hours’ worth of air. The work they did was exhausting. Around the active crater area, they waded through dense, hot, acidic mud, but they collected the bodies, and prepared them for final retrieval by helicopter to HMNZS Wellington , which was waiting offshore.

They recovered six bodies, but two had gone. Marshall-Inman and Winona Langford had been 800m away from the eruption, and 300m from the shoreline, but a violent rainstorm had swollen the stream near where they lay, and washed them into the sea. Police would later say that, while patrolling in Te Awapuia Bay, they’d seen a body believed to be Marshall-Inman near the landing, but couldn’t get close enough to recover it, and called in a Navy inflatable. In rebounding waves, the Navy personnel were unable to take the body aboard, and the rough sea allowed no second chance.

Resigned to the lack of any formal goodbye, the Inman family organised a celebration of life at the Whakatane Baptist Church on 20 December. Maangi’s photo was on display, too, and hundreds attended. The mourners heard from the helicopter-pilot rescuers that both Marshall-Inman and Maangi had tried to help members of their tour groups before they’d finally succumbed. Monday 9 December had been Marshall-Inman’s 1111th venture onto the island, and each one of them, except the last, had been recorded in his diary.

A few weeks later, Marshall-Inman’s brother Mark Inman and friends rode jet skis out to Whakaari, and sat on their craft in Te Awapuia Bay. After the long haul out to the island, the eight riders opened cans of beer and performed their own karakia – Maori incantations and prayers, used to invoke spiritual guidance and protection – to their friend and brother, and to all those who’d lost their lives.

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The True Story of the White Island Eruption

Last December, around 100 tourists set out for New Zealand's Whakaari/White Island, where an active volcano has attracted hundreds of thousands of vacationers since the early 1990s. It was supposed to be a routine six-hour tour, including the highlight: a quick hike into the island's otherworldly caldera. Then the volcano exploded. What happened next reveals troubling questions about the risks we're willing to take when lives hang in the balance.

Heading out the door? Read this article on the Outside app available now on iOS devices for members! >","name":"in-content-cta","type":"link"}}'>Download the app .

Later, everyone who saw White Island erupt would remark on how quiet it was, how magnificent, and how swift. At 2:10 P.M., nothing. At 2:11, a two-mile-high tower of steam. Fifty miles away on New Zealand’s North Island, a search and rescue helicopter crew returning to base watched, astonished, as a colossal mushroom unfurled on the horizon. “Oh, my God!” shouted the pilot. “We’ve just seen a volcano erupt!” Then, a shudder of dread. It was December 9, the summer season. The island would be packed with day-trippers.

Just inland from the island’s rocky southern beach, with four middle-aged German clients he had brought in by chopper an hour earlier, pilot Brian Depauw glanced around to see a mammoth cumulus silently fill the sky behind him, then “go vertical.” Off the island’s east coast, on the Phoenix with a few dozen other tourists, Brazilian Allessandro Kauffmann captured the moment on video . The clip shows a vast ball of cloud roll out of the crater, then, soundlessly and impossibly fast, swallow the island. The initial eruption is followed moments later by a second blast, a dark gray avalanche that shoots out horizontally, directly toward the camera. The color and texture indicate a mix of rock, ash, and acid gas, a superheated pyroclastic flow. Its focused direction suggests that the crater amphitheater, with its high sides and single exit through a collapsed southern wall, has acted like a cannon: the explosion bounced off the caldera’s back and sides and is barrelling out the opening. The force of the wave is awesome. “Huge smoke coming very quickly … getting massive so fast,” was how Kauffmann’s wife, Aline, described it to reporters .

Paul Kingi, crewing on the Phoenix, saw the blast drop down onto the sea and hurtle toward his boat. As he yelled at everyone to get inside, the boat’s skipper gunned south, then made a wide curve around to the west and north, sidestepping the ash cloud like a matador executing a pass.

In Crater Bay on the Phoenix ’s sister ship, the Te Puia Whakaari , captain David Plews had no such chance. He was anchored in the path of a 60-mile-per-hour gas and rock tsunami. Already engulfed, or about to be, were his 42 passengers. Deep inside the crater, guide Hayden Marshall-Inman’s group of 21 had disappeared. Kelsey Waghorn’s group of 21, near the shore, were seconds from following them. Plews grabbed the ship’s radio. “Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!” he shouted.

On land, Depauw heard the cries and saw what was about to happen. “Jump into the water!” he screamed at his guests. Depauw ran to the water’s edge and leapt. Two clients followed. The other two were unable to make the water in time. Depauw took a lungful of air as the black fog flew toward him. This is it , he thought. There’s no surviving this. Then he ducked.

When dawn had broken that day across the North Island’s north shore, before the light hit the beaches or the green mountains beyond, it caught White Island’s willowy plume, like a distant smoke signal, way out on the northern horizon. By the time Hayden Marshall-Inman arrived on Whakatane’s river-side quay to help prep the boat, the day was already sharp enough to give him a clear view across the Bay of Plenty, through the collapsed crater wall, and into the heart of the volcano. In his 40 years, Hayden had never tired of watching the steam shoot from the ground, puffing, balling, and rising into the wind before it drifted off across the water. The log he kept of his visits told him that this would be his 1,111th trip into New Zealand’s most active volcano , which followed 300 by his father, Alan, 69, a White Island Tours guide before him. When people asked, father and son always said: because it was never the same place twice.

The Marshall-Inmans shared their obsession with the Maori, to whom the island was a living ancestor, Whakaari , and the two dozen skippers, guides, and game-fish captains who drank at the Sportfishing Club, a few steps back from the wharf. Eight hundred years earlier, some of the first Maori to reach New Zealand from Polynesia came ashore at Whakatane. After James Cook’s arrival in 1769, the settlement became a town of shipbuilders, fishermen, and traders. By the 21st century, most of the men and women who still worked on the sea made their living taking some 20,000 tourists a year to the island.

The foundation of their business was an accident of nature that made White Island one of the world’s most accessible volcanos . With only a third of the cone above the ocean’s surface, and its fallen wall forming a giant natural drawbridge, all it took was 90 minutes in a boat or 20 in a helicopter and you were stepping off directly into the caldera. The place had a definite menace to it: the acrid air, the gas jets heated to 1,200 degrees, a lake at the bottom of an inner depression whose acidity was off the pH scale, and an abandoned sulfur mine from which ten men were swept away by a mud avalanche in 1914 , leaving only a cat named Peter as witness to their final moments. Claude Sarich, who worked the mine in the early 1930s, wrote : “The worst hell on earth, a place where rocks exploded in the intense heat, where … [clothes] just fell apart in a couple of hours, where [men] had to clean their teeth at least three times a day because their teeth went black.”

The mine closed in the 1930s, and for decades White Island was largely forgotten. But in the early 1990s, as adventure tourism took off, Whakatane’s sailors and pilots began offering day trips to this other world across the sea. The thousand-foot-high crater walls, the raw rockscape, the fine dust—the whole power and wonder of it—was as close as most would come to walking on the moon. Hayden’s brother, Mark, who proposed to his wife, Andy, in the crater, described it as “a thing of beauty.” Add in the chance to sail between three rock stacks said to be the gates to the Maori underworld and you had an experience that the guidebooks called unmissable.

In the weeks that followed the eruption, hundreds of columnists and radio hosts would take a different view: How crazy did you have to be, they would ask, to go walking around a live volcano, let alone run a business taking people there? The truth was: not crazy at all. Compared with climbing or jet-boating, or even swimming or driving a car , visiting a volcano was safe. A 2017 Journal of Applied Volcanology survey of every recorded volcano fatality for the past five centuries found that an average of one tourist, climber, camper, student, pilgrim, or park warden died every year on a volcano. Instead, like earthquakes and tsunamis, most volcano deaths occur among people who live in the area—the Journal counted 800 million residents within 60 miles of the world’s 1,508 active volcanoes, and reported that 216,035 had died in 517 years—though today, with early warnings and evacuation drills, years can pass without a single one of those, either.

White Island was also one of the world’s most closely observed craters, studded with webcams, seismometers, UV spectrometers, and survey pegs. The chemical makeup of its air and waters was regularly tested. The results fed into a frequent analysis by the geological monitoring service, GeoNet, which rated the alert level on a scale of 0 to 5. Limiting tours to levels 1 and 2, and granting skippers and pilots the prerogative to cancel a landing if they didn’t like the conditions, had helped ensure no fatalities in more than a century, even though White Island erupted continuously from 1975 to 2000.

Visiting White Island was about the thrill of feeling a little more alive by feeling a little closer to death, all the while knowing that, really, you were in no more danger than you would be crossing a road.

That spotless record partly reflected the tameness of the tours. If New Zealand’s adventure industry often seemed like a marriage of the outdoors and mad science—seeing what happened, say, if you leapt off a bridge with a rubber band tied to your ankles—a walk around White Island was one of its gentler offerings. The crater was two-thirds of a mile in diameter; the walk covered about half that. The established route started at a jetty on the island’s southern shore and climbed leisurely up a dirt track through the collapsed crater wall, skirting bubbling mud puddles and steaming fumaroles before reaching the rim of the inner depression, from where visitors could gaze down at the acid lake. After that, it was a 30-minute stroll back past the old sulfur factory to the jetty. Tourists aged eight to eighty, wearing hard hats and carrying gas masks, had no trouble completing the trail in an hour and a half.

If White Island Tours was guilty of anything, it was of hamming up the risk. A leaflet from 2006 was headlined: “Volcano. Handle With Scare!” Guides liked to warn visitors that an eruption could happen at any moment, and that anybody caught in one could expect to be hit by rocks, scalded by steam, and enveloped in an acid mist as the crater lake flash-vaporized. Alan Marshall-Inman would have his groups dip their fingers in the coppery streams and ask them if they tasted blood. Hayden would tell the story of an ash eruption during a visit in September 2017. “We were walking into it,” he told a travel program in July 2018. “I could definitely feel the nerves inside me for sure.”

That was the whole idea of visiting White Island. It was about the thrill of feeling a little more alive by feeling a little closer to death, all the while knowing that, really, you were in no more danger than you would be crossing a road.

By early December, it was peak season on the island, and the volcano seemed to be cooperating. On November 19 , GeoNet had raised the alert from 1 to 2, but a week later it had clarified that despite “a few earthquakes,” “high to moderate” gas emissions, and the possibility that the volcano was “entering a period where eruptive activity is more likely than normal,” it did not consider the new mud fountains in the crater to be a hazard to visitors and that, overall, the island was in a state of “moderate volcanic unrest.”

With that assessment, the volcano would be crowded. White Island Tours, where Hayden was a skipper, had around 100 passengers booked, requiring three of its four boats. Also heading out were two small helicopters from Volcanic Air, flying visitors from Rotorua, up in the hills.

With White Island Tours’ fleet of cruisers, and the helicopters making up to three trips a day, skippers and pilots coordinated their arrivals to avoid swamping the island. That collegial spirit was apparent, too, in the consideration shown to Brian Depauw, a young airman who had returned to New Zealand after two years flying tourists over Victoria Falls in Zambia. Though Depauw was working for Volcanic, he had trained at Kahu, the other helicopter outfit flying to White Island, run by a towering former special-forces soldier with a boxer’s nose named Mark Law. In any other town, Depauw’s switch might have rankled Law, just as Law might have seen his operation as a rival to White Island Tours. But in Whakatane, Law described Depauw and Volcanic boss Tim Barrow as “mates,” while Law’s children were best friends with Hayden’s niece and nephew—Andy and Mark’s kids—and he and Hayden were regulars at the town rugby park, where they could be found cheering on their boys.

That was the kind of place Whakatane was. A town of some 17,000, without a traffic light, whose street of tourist cafés and restaurants might die down in winter, but that, year-round, had its own clubs for rowing and cricket, croquet and table tennis, even skeet shooting and petanque, its own theater and newspaper, the Beacon , its own airport, university, and hospital, a cardboard mill, two boat builders, and three rescue services—fire, ambulance, and coast guard—all staffed, in part, by volunteers. In Whakatane, people pitched in. The town mayor, Judy Turner, doubled as a funeral celebrant. Another of Kahu’s pilots was Tom Storey, an easygoing 29-year-old with hazel eyes who, when he wasn’t flying or hunting deer or wild boar, ran Back Country Builders, erecting beach houses. The way people juggled roles in Whakatane said something about small towns. But it said as much about New Zealand, a nation built by men and women who had crossed thousands of miles by canoe and ship, and referred to themselves as “number-eight wire” types—the sort who could tame a land and fix just about anything with a coil of fencing line.

That sense of community enterprise animated White Island Tours. Whakatane’s biggest Maori tribe, the Ngati Awa, bought the operation in 2017 using money from a state program designed to compensate for the colonial theft of their land. There were a few grumbles about that in Whakatane among pakeha , the name Maori gave the descendants of European settlers, a minority of whom still saw Maoris’ poor showing in health, education, and crime as evidence of a natural order. But in a town that was 43.5 percent Maori , most considered racism not just unpleasant but impractical, something that got in the way of getting on. They approved of how the Ngati Awa used White Island Tours’ profits to fund social programs to lift their people, historically some of the poorest in New Zealand. They were proud, too, of how such initiatives explained why New Zealand’s national experiment was held up as an example to Australia, South Africa, and even the U.S.

To its mixed-race staff of 60, and especially to Hayden, White Island Tours was a second family. Ten years earlier, boat manager Paul Kingi had taken on “Hayds” over a handshake when he was a beach bum with few ambitions beyond watching the Chiefs, the rugby team he worshipped, and pursuing an endless summer from Whakatane to Maine, where he worked in YMCA camps. Hayden became Kingi’s “pet project,” said Rick Pollock, 72, a retired Whakatane charter captain who had employed Hayden and Kingi as deckhands. Though Hayden struggled at first with the seven different talks on safety, history, and geology that a guide had to master, he looked the part with his seaman’s build and pirate’s sideburns, and he had such a way with passengers that Kingi came to see him as one of his best assets, promoting him from guide to skipper. “He used to talk to everybody,” Kingi said later. “He wanted to know their life story—he used to get around and make sure he spoke to everybody on that boat.” In 2016, when an engine fire engulfed the Peejay V as it returned from White Island, it was Hayden who guided everyone to safety, making sure he was among the last off. Pollock said of his former crew member: “He would help anybody. That’s who he was.”

The Maori way of looking at Hayden, and Whakatane, was that they lived by  tikanga. The word described a good heart, a true soul, a deep, spiritual instinct for doing what was right, rooted in centuries of listening to the world and accepting your place in it. People who followed  tikanga knew what to do and did it without thinking. Tikanga was why, when Kingi called for extra hands to crew a third boat for 38 passengers of a cruise liner that had just docked down the coast, Hayden offered to take a day’s demotion from skipper to guide to accommodate the additional clients. It was also why, a day later, in the face of extraordinary danger, and in defiance of an order to rescue crews to remain on the mainland, so many Whakatane men and women would risk everything to try to save them.

Kingi staggered his three boats’ departures. The Peejay IV left at around 9:30 A.M. The Phoenix followed at 10:30, with Kingi helping out as crew. Last to leave, at around 11:30, was the season’s new addition, the Te Puia Whakaari , a catamaran with a cruising speed of 30 knots . At the wheel was David Plews, a White Island veteran with eyes the hue of sea ice, who, at the helm of the Peejay V during the 2016 fire, had calmly anchored the blazing boat at a spot off Whakatane Heads where it could sink without obstructing the harbor.

Assisting Plews on his new boat were four guides. Kelsey Waghorn, 25, a marine biologist with a cascade of mousey brown curls and a rescue dog called River, would lead the first group of 19 passengers. She would be backed up by Jake Milbank, celebrating his 19th birthday that day, whose elfin blond hair framed his delicate features. Hayden would take the second group of 19. His assistant would be Tipene Maangi, a personable 24-year-old with a deep knowledge of Maori myths and two months on the job.

The guides chatted with the passengers as they were welcomed aboard. Their liner, the Ovation of the Seas , had sailed from Sydney on December 4, and 24 of them were Australian, mostly families and middle-aged couples. The rest included nine Americans, two Chinese women, two British women, and a Malaysian man.

After an uneventful crossing, Plews anchored the Te Puia Whakaari in Crater Bay around 1 P.M. and began running his passengers ashore. An hour later, the number of tourists on the island had peaked. The Peejay IV was already heading back to Whakatane with its few dozen passengers. A similar number from the Phoenix had completed their walk and, back on board, were cruising northeast for one last photo opportunity. The two small parties flown in by Volcanic were also close to leaving. The first chopper departed at 2:05. Ten minutes behind were Brian Depauw and his four guests, who would soon board their chopper for the flight back to Rotorua.

Last to leave would be the 38 passengers and four guides from the Te Puia Whakaari. At two o’clock, Waghorn’s group were already near the abandoned sulfur factory and would soon reach the jetty where Plews would pick them up. Hayden’s group—one Australian-American family of four and 15 other Australians, including a family of four, two families of three, a trio of friends in their thirties, and a mother and daughter—were at the lip of the inner crater looking down on the lake.

At 2:10, a GeoNet camera taking pictures at ten-minute intervals caught an image of Hayden’s group in the distance. They have left the inner rim and are walking in single file back down a gentle slope, heading for the jetty. Though the image isn’t sharp enough to identify individuals, it shows body shapes. The walkers look relaxed. Their arms appear to be swinging, their postures indicate an ambling pace, and their loose grouping suggests no urgency. Some figures are half-turned, seemingly in conversation. One looks to be to be pointing out a rock formation.

For all but three, it was the last picture of them alive.

Trauma surgeons talk about a “golden hour” within which to begin treating injuries. A volcanic eruption means burns, and with those, time is especially pressing. Even the most severely injured can sometimes walk and talk immediately after exposure. But as the seconds pass, their skin swells and blisters, even peels right off, while those who have inhaled toxic gas find their breathing ever more restricted. The difference between life and death can be minutes.

On December 9, the initial response was fast. Several skippers out at sea saw the eruption and called it in. Whakatane’s coast guard reported minutes later that White Island Tours had three boats out with around 100 people aboard. At that, dispatchers scrambled 11 search and rescue choppers on the North Island. The SAR crew who had seen White Island erupt were based 20 minutes away at Tauranga and in position to be first on the scene. Following would be two AW 169’s from Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust, which could fly at 190 miles per hour and, with the golden hour in mind, were fitted out as flying emergency rooms. Whereas it used to be “half an hour to get there, half an hour to get them to hospital,” said spokesman Lincoln Davies, “we can treat them straight away.”

When the national air desk issued the crews their dispatch orders, however, there was a shock. No one would be flying to White Island. Instead, the crews were told that they would receive casualties at Whakatane, then transport them to burn units across the country. The order must have struck the crews as illogical—if the rescuers weren’t doing any rescuing, how would there be any casualties to transfer?—but when they double-checked, the word came back: stay away from White Island. “Much higher-ups said: ‘It’s an active volcano which is erupting, and you have to consider whether you’re putting crews’ lives in danger,’ ” said Sharni Weir, spokeswoman for Philips Search and Rescue Trust, which operates four choppers. “We would want to go to White Island, [but] air desk said: ‘No, you’re all to go to Whakatane.’ And we all went there.”

Underwater, Depauw saw a dark wave roll across the surface, then everything go black. After what he thought was two minutes, the light began to return and Depauw, his lungs aching, burst up into the air. The water around him was slicked with a dirty yellow dust that stank of sulfur. But behind the blast wave, the air was beginning to clear.

Out in the bay, the Te Puia Whakaari was coated in matte gray ash. The beach, which had been a mosaic of colorful rocks, was buried under drifts of Chernobyl-like dust. In the crater, Depauw’s helicopter had taken the full force of the blast. Caked in ash, its 1.5-ton weight had been knocked off its landing platform, and the blast had left two of its rotor blades folded at right angles to the ground like giant spider legs. Depauw checked his passengers. The two with him in the water seemed unhurt, though it later transpired that the woman had suffered burns to her arm. He was less sure about the other two, who were now gathering with Waghorn’s group on the jetty.

As Depauw swam in, the Phoenix sped into the bay. While the boat anchored, Kingi launched a tender and raced to the jetty. Michael Schade, a tech manager from San Francisco, filmed the scene . The passengers look unhurried. One woman whose appearance matches that of Ivy Kohn Reed, 51, from Gaithersburg, Maryland, north of Washington, D.C., has her hands on her hips, waiting patiently to board. A man is sitting down on the jetty, almost as though he’s resting on a hot day.

Only a closer look reveals anything amiss. The group’s clothing is muted gray with ash. The legs of one woman sitting on the jetty, inching herself forward, appear blackened. On board Kingi’s tender, Waghorn is covered in ash and moving unsteadily. Jake Milbank is also coated and lying in the bows, staring up at the sky.

At 2:24, Schade took a still of Kingi ferrying passengers to the Phoenix. Kingi is grim faced, hunched over the wheel. His passengers crouch forward. One woman, probably newlywed Lauren Urey, 32, from Richmond, Virginia, is covered in ash. A gray arm, likely belonging to her husband, Matt, 36, is hugging her. In the bows, a guide from the Phoenix supports a woman with her right hand while her left arm hugs Milbank, who appears to have collapsed.

In a handful of runs, Kingi and his crew picked up all 19 passengers from Waghorn’s group, their two guides, plus Depauw and his four clients. As the Phoenix ’s skipper set off for Whakatane, Kingi switched boats to the Te Puia Whakaari , saying that he would make a final sweep of the shore. Heading deeper into the crater, Kingi was astonished to see a figure stumble out of the ash. Jesse Langford , 19, who had been with Hayden’s group inside the caldera with his father Anthony, 51, mother Kristine, 45, and sister Winona, 17, had somehow made it down to the shore. Kingi was even more stunned when he saw Langford’s injuries. No part of him was untouched. His hair, face, chest, arms, hands, legs, and feet were all burned.

Carefully, Kingi assisted the teenager into the tender and raced him over to the Te Puia Whakaari. Plews raised anchor, opened the throttle, and roared off for Whakatane. With word that the Peejay IV was returning to the island after disembarking its uninjured passengers, Kingi elected to stay behind and continue to search.

Unusual for peak season, there were no Kahu helicopters flying that day. Tom Storey was doing foundation work on a new beach house. Mark Law had been at a mountain-bike competition on the South Island that weekend and was driving the coast road back to Whakatane when he saw a massive, sinister-looking column of smoke appear on the horizon.

Law called the Kahu office. Within minutes, they called back to say that GeoNet’s island webcams had been knocked out and the White Island boats at the volcano weren’t responding. Law asked the office to call Storey and another pilot, Jason Hill. Then he phoned Tim Barrow. The Volcanic boss said that one of his choppers had made a narrow escape but another, flown by Depauw, was on the island when it erupted.

Next, John Funnell called. Funnell, 69, was a pioneer of New Zealand’s search and rescue service who lived in Taupo, in the hills. He had been teaching instrument approaches to a student at Whakatane airstrip when he saw the eruption. He landed, dropped off his student, and headed to the island. Because rescue crews inside the steep-sided crater would be cut off from all communication except what they could pick up on short-range handheld radios, Funnell told Law that he would circle the island and provide overhead radio cover, juggling his VHF radio and a cell phone to relay messages from the police and coast guard.

Arriving at Kahu’s hangar, Law called Barrow again. The men agreed: with Funnell in place, rescue crews expected to be converging on an island the two of them knew better than anyone, and word filtering through that Hayden might have been out there when it blew, they needed to get in the air.

At 2:50, Jason Hill took off with Tom Storey as copilot. Flying solo, Law followed a few minutes later. At 3:05, Barrow and copilot Graeme Hopcroft lifted off from Rotorua.

Speeding back to Whakatane, the Phoenix was now a hospital ship. Nearly an hour after the eruption, passengers who had been able to walk aboard were now moaning and screaming as their burns swelled and blistered. Tongues were puffing. Throats were closing. “You’d lift someone’s shirt and the shirt was in perfect condition, but there would be terrible burns underneath it,” Geoff Hopkins, on a tour with his daughter, told Radio New Zealand . Initially, he, Depauw, and other passengers had poured bottled water on the burns. Now many of the injured were going into shock. Some couldn’t tolerate wind or sunlight. Others shivered uncontrollably. Hopkins told Good Morning Britain that he found himself comforting Lauren and Matt Urey, who were slipping in and out of consciousness. “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” Lauren would say. “You can!” Hopkins would insist. “You’re a fighter! There’s more for you. It’s not going to end today.”

Approaching the Phoenix from the air, Storey and Hill saw passengers on deck performing CPR. As the pair attempted to airlift the worst injured, Mark Law shot past. A few minutes later, with Hill still hovering, Law learned that a coast guard boat from Whakatane with two paramedics on board was approaching the Phoenix. He told Hill and Storey to leave the boat to the coast guard. He needed them on the island.

Passing over the crater, Law had spotted more than a dozen people in a loose grouping on the crater floor a couple hundred yards below the inner depression. Some were sitting. Some were “starfished.” At 3:12, an hour and a minute after the eruption, Law touched down on a landing platform. Hill and Storey followed. The acid in the air would be ruinous to their choppers. But “the most important thing was we went and cared for those folks who were alive, dying, and dead,” Law said.

Strapping on gas masks, Law, Hill, and Storey ran the few hundred yards up into the crater through shin-deep drifts of hot ash. Once they reached the group, the three men hurried from person to person, checking their injuries and reassuring them that help was coming. Their burns were gruesome. “They were black,” said Law. “Anything exposed was burned.” Law had tended badly wounded soldiers in combat. “Nothing more important in that situation than to hear someone arrive and take care of you when you are in such an agonizing, confused, painful, lost state,” he said. Some of the group were unresponsive, possibly dead. Most were alive, if dazed and incoherent. “People were groaning and asking for water,” Storey said.

All 20 people that the pilots found were below the rim of the inner crater, forming a loose line along the path. Many of their burns were so severe that later, when the pilots saw pictures of the dead and missing on the news, they didn’t recognise them. One adult was so disfigured it was impossible to tell if they were a man or a woman. But from police press releases, the pilots’ descriptions, and confirmation from New Zealand police, the 20 were:

Martin Hollander, 48, and his U.S.-born wife, Barbara, 49, from Sydney, and their boys, Berend, 16, and Matthew, 13; Gavin and Lisa Dallow, 53 and 48, from Adelaide, and their daughter, Zoe Hosking, 15; Kristine and Anthony Langford, 45 and 51, from Sydney, and their daughter Winona, 17; Paul Browitt, from Melbourne, and his daughters Stephanie, 23, and Krystal, 21; Julie Richards, 47, from Brisbane, and her daughter, Jessica, 20; Richard Elzer, 32, and Karla Mathews, 32—boyfriend and girlfriend—and their friend Jason Griffiths, 33, all from the eastern Australian town of Coffs Harbour; Hayden Marshall-Inman and Tipene Maangi, both guides.

At first, when Storey came across two young women, Krystal Browitt and either Jessica Richards or Zoe Hosking, lying unconscious next to each other, he thought they were dead, but feeling for a pulse, he found one on both. A few yards downhill, lying next to a stream, Tipene Maangi was showing no signs of life. Fifty yards away, one of the Hollander boys was breathing. Looking for Hayden, Law followed a set of footprints in the ash leading away from the main group, past Maangi, toward the sea. His friend was 40 yards on, lying by the same stream, unresponsive. Winona Langford was nearby. She also wasn’t moving.

As the three pilots worked, they were able to piece together some of what had happened. From where they were, the walkers would have seen the initial eruption. Behind a boulder, Storey and Law came across a small pile of phones and tablets; video from them would later confirm that several had stopped to film the steam cloud. What none of them could have seen, until it crested the lip and consumed them, was the horizontal blast of rock, ash, and acid mist. Many injuries were to their anterior sides, suggesting that they were facing it when it hit. Superintendent Andy McGregor, police district commander for the Bay of Plenty, said: “In the ash was hydrochloride, hydrofluoride, and sulfur dioxide. Mix those with water and you get hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, [which] attacks calcium, and sulfuric acid. So you’ve got superheated gases, you’ve got the blast, and you’ve got the acid atmosphere. Imagine what that does.” The pilots didn’t have to. Along with the burns, they found evidence of the eruption’s force. Law noted numerous shrapnel injuries and signs of internal damage. Storey came across one man with part of his head missing.

Amid the carnage were signs of courage and sacrifice. A guide’s medical kit sitting among the group was probably carried there by Hayden or Maangi after the blast. Many of the injured were wearing gas masks that looked to have been placed on them after they’d lost consciousness. In Maangi’s outstretched hand was an asthma inhaler, as though he was passing it to someone when he succumbed. The footprints described almost unbelievable heroism. Atop the ash, they had to have been made after the eruption and seemed to indicate that Hayden had backtracked and tried to lead his group away from the crater, toward the ocean. The position of his body, Maangi’s, and Winona’s suggested that, in the darkness of the ash cloud, they were following the stream downhill. None of them made it. But Winona’s elder brother, Jesse, had run all the way to the jetty.

As they processed what they were seeing, the pilots steeled themselves with the thought that they had arrived in time. Most of the injured were hanging on, if barely. The pilots understood that rescue crews were en route. “I think they were only about four or five miles away,” Storey said.

Then, sometime between 3:25 and 3:30, Funnell came back on the radio. The rescuers had been ordered to Whakatane. No help was coming. The pilots were on their own.

One of the cornerstones of New Zealand’s adventure-tourism industry is a 1972 law effectively banning personal-injury lawsuits. In their place, the government set up a mandatory compensation policy under which it would foot all bills for the dead and injured. It was an unusual legal innovation and a typically Kiwi one: New Zealanders didn’t sue for damages, they fixed them.

A generation later, New Zealand was the adventure capital of the world. But the deaths of 37 tourists between 2006 and 2009 led to concerns over public safety, which intensified when 29 miners were killed in a methane explosion at the Pike River coal mine on the South Island in November 2010, and again in February 2011, when an earthquake in Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand’s South Island, killed 185 people. The result, in 2013, was a stringent new set of health and safety regulations , policed by a new government agency, Worksafe, with the power to impose million-dollar fines and imprison offenders for up to five years. New Zealand’s adventure operators were required to obtain Worksafe certification and submit to regular inspections.

With its impeccable record and easy crater walks, White Island Tours wasn’t much affected by the new dispensation. When a 73-year-old fell to his death on a guided walk around the neighboring island of Moutohora in April 2019, Worksafe cleared the company of blame. Two months before the eruption , a Worksafe inspector who’d joined a tour of White Island reportedly raised no concerns.

But Pike River had another legacy. Alarm about working conditions was quickly replaced by public outrage over a refusal by police commanders to send search and rescue teams into the mine on the grounds that it was unsafe. The police weren’t wrong to be concerned: in the nine days that followed the disaster, there were three more methane explosions. Still, two men walked out of the mine shortly after the blast, and the idea that rescue professionals, whose job it was to head into danger to save lives, might be held back by health and safety rules offended what New Zealanders like to call the Kiwi way. In 2012, an independent inquiry criticized the emergency response as “cumbersome” and said it was wrong to assign command to senior police officers in the capital, Wellington, who would have no idea of the reality on the ground. But the unease generated by Pike River endured. Despite more inquiries and election pledges, the miners’ 29 bodies remain unrecovered .

The lesson of Pike River was that disaster response needed quick, informed decision-making, and this required rescuers on the ground assessing their own risks and making their own calls. Instead of heeding it, however, the central government responded as central governments are bound to: with more regulation. In the wake of the disaster, New Zealand’s rescuers found themselves subject to ever tighter rules on workplace safety. The July 2018 New Zealand Aeromedical and Air Rescue Standard , a revised version of guidelines already updated in 2015 and 2012, required operators to ensure they were “recognising and minimising the risk of threat and error,” and crews to “operate within a risk management system that maximises aviation safety.” Rescues would “never be to the detriment of flight safety.” The first criterion for judging whether a crew was fit to deploy was their ability to provide “safe and effective support of the operation of the aircraft in the prevailing and forecast conditions.” An ability to give “appropriate clinical support for the person(s) in distress” was merely the fifth criterion. In 59 pages of guidelines, just one, page 48, concerned patient safety.

After observing the rescue crews arrive and cut their engines outside the Kahu hangar, Mark Law suspected they might be a no-show on the island. When official confirmation came, his decision was immediate. “As soon as Mark heard that they had been retasked to Whakatane, he said we would be taking the victims out,” Storey said.

As Hill ran back to fetch his helicopter and fly it up into the crater, Law and Storey began picking up casualties. Among the first to be loaded was Lisa Dallow, who they knew was alive since, after asking Storey for water, she started throwing up blood and ash. Next, Storey approached Paul Browitt, who was sitting up. “Afterward,” the tax inspector croaked. “Grab my daughter first. She’s in the blue.” Storey ran over to Stephanie, in a blue Adidas top, and carried her to the chopper. He then went back for her father. After that, Law and Storey hauled over a male casualty, then the man with the head wound. With his maximum load of five casualties on board, Hill departed for Whakatane at 3:48.

As Law ran to fetch his chopper, Storey readied the next five casualties. The urgency of their situation was suddenly apparent. People were dying all around him. Maangi was long gone. When Storey returned to the two young women, neither had a pulse. Uphill, Richard Elzer and Karla Mathews had died lying next to each other. Alongside them was another lifeless body, likely Julie Richards. Hayden and Winona Langford hadn’t stirred. A young woman—from Storey’s description, probably Zoe Hosking, 15—was still breathing when he picked her up and as he carried her to the chopper. “She was holding on to me,” he said. “Then she went all limp.” Reaching Law, he nodded at the body in his arms. “I think she’s gone,” he said. Law said to load her anyway.

While Storey and Law lifted more casualties aboard, Tim Barrow and Graeme Hopcroft touched down below. Over the radio, Law directed Barrow to the lower Hollander boy. He, too, was now in a bad way, said Barrow. “Not capable of communicating,” the Volcanic boss told Radio New Zealand . “Just asking for water.” Barrow and Hopcroft managed to walk the boy to their helicopter, then helped Storey and Law load Law’s next five casualties, after which the ex-special-forces pilot took off for Whakatane. Barrow then flew his helicopter into the crater and picked up the final casualty that Storey could identify as alive. Barrow and Hopcroft left shortly afterward. By then, 4:07, Jason Hill was touching down on the mainland and the Phoenix was arriving at Whakatane wharf.

Deep inside the crater, guide Hayden Marshall-Inman’s group of 21 had disappeared. Kelsey Waghorn’s group of 21, near the shore, were seconds from following them. Plews grabbed the ship’s radio. “Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!”

In all, the pilots picked up 12 people in 40 minutes. Beyond help and still on the island were eight more casualties. Imagining that his friends would soon be returning for the bodies, Storey began moving them together to make extraction easier. He put Elzer, Mathews, and the third casualty beside each other in the recovery position. He did the same for the two young women. He dragged Maangi out of the stream. Following Law’s and Hayden’s footsteps, he heaved Hayden out of the water and sat him upright on a bank. To reach Winona Langford, on the far bank across a deep ash field, Storey followed the stream downhill, found a crossing, and walked back up the other side.

Everywhere he went, Storey found phones, which he tucked in their owners’ hands as a way to identify them. He noted which bodies were wearing Ovation of the Seas identification tags. When Funnell alerted him to the arrival of a fourth Volcanic crew and, finally, a rescue chopper, Storey walked down to the beach to meet them.

Storey described his tour of the crater. There was no one left, he said. It would be four days before a military squad in hazmat suits recovered the bodies.

In Whakatane, as soon as the Kahu and Volcanic pilots returned, the police ordered them to stand down. Superintendent McGregor later said that what the pilots had achieved was “fantastic.” But he added: “It’s a police decision for their own safety. They came back and said there is no one left. And we said: ‘We can look to recover bodies later.’ ”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern flew in and met the pilots just after the eruption. At a press conference , she acknowledged “those pilots who … made an incredibly brave decision under extraordinarily dangerous circumstances in an attempt to get people out.” By then, however, Law, Storey, Barrow, and Hill were telling reporters that the authorities were being too cautious. The families needed to bury their loved ones. Conditions were perfect. Law said that he and the others could fly to the island, pick up all eight bodies, and be back in an hour and a half.

In fact, the opportunity to retrieve all the bodies had passed. A heavy rainstorm had hit the island overnight, and an ash mudslide that the police estimated at five feet deep washed down the streambed and swept Hayden’s and Winona Langford’s bodies out to sea. On December 11, navy divers found Hayden’s corpse lying on the seabed and brought him to the surface. But when they took their boat into deeper water to transfer him to a police launch, they dropped his body in a heavy swell and it sank in hundreds of feet of water. Two days later, December 13, an army team took about three hours to recover the six remaining bodies . The search for Hayden and Winona was finally called off on Christmas Eve.

Of the 47 people on White Island at the time of the eruption, 21 died and 24 were injured. Of the 12 flown out by Hill, Law, and Barrow, 10 died. Paul Browitt , who had insisted that his daughter Stephanie be rescued before him, clung to life for more than a month but finally passed away in a hospital in Melbourne on January 13, bringing to 18 the number from Hayden’s group of 21 who perished. The dead from Waghorn’s group included Chris Cozad , a 43-year-old father of three from Sydney, who died on December 14, and Mayuri Singh and her husband, Pratap , from outside Atlanta, who died, respectively, on December 22 and January 28.

The survivors required so many skin grafts that New Zealand put out a global order for 33.8 square meters , the equivalent of 16 bodies’ worth. By mid-February, Lisa Dallow was described as critical but stable in Melbourne. At the same hospital, Stephanie Browitt, 23, was expected to recover after spending weeks in an induced coma; her mother, Marie, who’d remained on the Ovation while her husband and two daughters went to White Island, had barely left her side . Rick and Ivy Kohn Reed , and Matt and Lauren Urey, returned to the U.S. After 25 operations to treat burns covering 80 percent of his body, Jake Milbank wrote his thanks to supporters, who’d raised $87,700 to pay for his treatment. Kelsey Waghorn , who underwent 14 surgeries of her own for her 45 percent burns, wrote to donors who had raised $68,580 for her: “I’ll just keep pushing forward and hope that that will do for now.”

The most extraordinary survival story belonged to Jesse Langford. Despite suffering burns over 90 percent of his body during his run through the crater, by December 30, the 19-year-old was able to write a eulogy for his father, mother, and sister. From his hospital bed in Sydney, he watched a livestream of their funeral, at which his words were read out. The past weeks “have taught me that when times are tough, you have to find that inner strength that pushes you to persevere,” he wrote . “You always have a bit more in you.”

Final analysis of the eruption is months away and may never be definitive. Still, New Zealand volcanologists are confident they know what happened. The eruption was most likely phreatomagmatic, combining steam and magma. It would have begun with a magma rise from a fault movement deep in the earth, which was then given more upward force by gases exsolving out of the liquid as it rose and depressurized, an effect that Tom Wilson, professor of disaster risk and resilience at the University of Canterbury, likened to opening a soda bottle. When the magma hit the acid crater lake, or seawater and rainwater percolating down, or both, the water would have been flashed into gas and the molten rock into glass. Both of those processes would have released enough explosive energy to shoot steam 12,000 feet into the air and blow a deadly wave of hot rock, ash, and acid gas across the crater floor.

Given the loss of life, Wilson said that more important than plotting the eruption’s precise cause was reckoning with its unpredictability. None of its various elements were detectable, he said, for the simple reason that on the scale of volcanic eruptions, December 9 was “really small.” Better science could help, but what was really needed was a “calm, measured, analytical” conversation about adventure tourism and acceptable risk, and an understanding that there were no easy answers. “We absolutely don’t tolerate 21 people dying in an event on White Island,” he said. Then again, “the whole point of adventure tourism is to have a bit of fun, a bit of risk, and for it to be exciting—and there is going to be risk and the potential for injuries and loss of life to occur.”

Under investigation by the coroner and Worksafe, White Island Tours must wait to hear whether it will be fined or prosecuted, or its business outlawed. The consensus in Whakatane is that landings on the island will be restricted and perhaps banned altogether.

So far, however, there has been no move to reexamine a set of health and safety regulations that, whatever their original intent, prevent rescue crews in New Zealand from doing their jobs. Of Hayden’s group, “no one would have lived if we hadn’t gone when we did,” said Law. If Kingi and the crew of the Phoenix hadn’t acted, two dozen more might have died. The irony, and tragedy, is that the order to bar rescuers from flying to White Island, where people were dying, was expressed in terms of public safety.

Asked why they’d stopped rescue crews from flying to White Island immediately after the 2:11 eruption, a spokesperson for the national air desk declined to comment. Asked why emergency crews were kept away, a spokesperson for the police, which had overall command of the operation, replied with a written statement saying, “There were no signs of life … conditions on the island were unstable and there was significant risk in landing. The difficult decision was made to pull back any deployed aircraft making rescue attempts to prevent further loss of life.”

The statement, which avoids addressing the absence of rescuers in the critical period after the eruption, seemed intended to obscure the central issue—how, in playing it by the book, the authorities blew the golden hour. Because there was time. The flight from the North Island to White Island takes 20 minutes. Five pilots in three helicopters picked up 12 casualties in 40 minutes. “The reality of the situation that day,” Law said, “is it was all about volunteers taking care of the needs of many, while emergency services reacted to the needs of compliance and personal safety.” The authorities, he said, were “on a completely different page than us.”

Officials willing to reflect could do worse than study Whakatane’s example. The elders of the Ngati Awa took the lead in the disaster’s aftermath. Preempting Worksafe, within hours of the disaster they placed a prohibition, or rahui , on White Island, forbidding visits and fishing trips. They welcomed and comforted the bereaved, found them accommodation and food. They led a daily service of communion and remembrance at the Maori meeting house, or marae , next to White Island Tours. Four days after the catastrophe, they sailed at dawn to the island with the relatives and held another service at sea . The idea, said elder Joe Harawira, was to “wrap around” those grieving with spiritual understanding.

Once more, this was tikanga. Not waiting for instruction but doing the right thing as a community with a common cause. It was the same with Whakatane’s pilots, Harawira said. “Those chopper pilots, what they did, what we did as a community, it came down to the difference between law and lore,” he said. “Laws dictate to the pilots that it’s too dangerous to go out there, you are not permitted to go, we are still assessing the situation. The pilots [followed] the lore, the heart. There were people out there, they were in danger, they didn’t know the situation and they just [went].” Taking risks could cost lives, no doubt, said Harawira. But the authorities had forgotten that it could save them, too.

Eleven days after the eruption, on December 20, the people of Whakatane assembled at the Baptist church for a service to celebrate Hayden’s life . Mark Marshall-Inman spoke. So did Paul Kingi, Tom Storey, and the family of Tipene Maangi, whose picture stood next to Hayden’s. Afterward, the talk was of dark times ahead. Fishing charters had plummeted. Kahu had folded its volcano business. White Island Tours would be lucky to survive.

But there was no question that Whakatane would endure. Now perhaps more than ever, its people knew who they were. One of the last to speak at the service was Avey Woods, Hayden’s mother. Her son had died exactly where he was meant to be, she said: helping others, doing the right thing. “Wherever he is, either on Whakaari or not, that’s where he should be,” she said. “He was the last man off that island. He will be the last man home.”

Editor’s Note: (April 21, 2020) The story has been updated with small changes to the use of the word “tikanga” and to the names “the North Island” and “the South Island.”

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Whakaari White Island trial hears expert evidence that there was a one in 20 chance of a 'mass casualty event'

An internationally renowned expert volcanologist has told the White Island trial that by his calculations tours to the island presented a one in 20 chance of a "mass casualty event". 

Sir Stephen Sparks travelled from the United Kingdom to give evidence in Auckland and told the court about the difference between the risk of death or injury to one person and the "societal risk to a population" when groups of tourists were regularly visiting the volcano.

The trial has heard nearly three full days of expert witness testimony so far this week, with a focus on how to evaluate the risk of Whakaari and how to communicate those risks. 

Dr Sparks explained his calculations considered the number of hours in the year groups of tourists were on the volcano, the size of those tours and the likelihood of an eruption in the same time frame.   

"I came up with something like a 5 per cent chance that a tour during the year might be affected. So that's about a one in 20 chance — a very high societal risk," he told the court under questioning from the prosecution.

Dr Sparks explained that if one tourist spends 1.25 hours on Whakaari in one year, the calculation of their risk would result in a much lower number. 

But the court heard groups of up to 40 tourists are on the island for 1,350 hours a year and that changes the risk calculation.

"The chances of a tour being on the island are much, much higher than any one individual," Dr Sparks said. 

"There is a much greater chance that there's going to be a mass casualty event." 

Prosecutor Kristy McDonald asked Dr Sparks about how tolerable that level of risk to a population was considered to be.

"The societal risk for the group of individuals — in other words, the mass casualty event — is hugely higher than what's normally regarded as an acceptable risk for a population or a group," he said.

"In particular, in the UK there are rule-of-thumb risk thresholds for industrial facilities for example, if you're going to build a chemical plant, then that's something like 1/100,000 risk of a mass casualty event," he said. 

"You've got to demonstrate you're below that kind of level.

"So that's comparing with one in 20 for societal risk for a visit to Whakaari. From a societal risk point of view, it's way into what would be regarded in the UK as an unacceptable risk."   

Dr Sparks gave evidence on Monday and Tuesday, while New Zealand volcanologist Professor Jonathan Proctor has been addressing the court on Wednesday. 

Worksafe NZ alleges the defendants did not adequately understand or manage the risk of running tours on the island. 

Thirteen parties were originally charged in this case, but after several guilty pleas were entered and one defendant had charges against it dismissed, now just six are on trial. 

Three of those defendants are the brothers who own Whakaari — James, Andrew and Peter Buttle. 

The three commercial entities on trial are their company Whakaari Management Limited, and tourism companies ID Tours New Zealand and Tauranga Tourism Services. 

Lawyer for the Buttle family James Cairney has previously noted to the court the brothers themselves did not conduct tours to the island. 

And in a document shown to the court, New Zealand's volcano monitor GNS Science had observed: "The three Buttle brothers all seemed to understand the need for robust risk management protocols to be in place and they undertook to talk to the operators to encourage them to re-think their procedures." 

This week, defence counsel spent some time questioning Dr Sparks on his risk calculations. 

Mr Cairney made the point tours happen concurrently and asked how would the risk calculation be affected if it was only a few hundred hours in the year when tourists were on the island. 

"It would have a modest effect on the calculation," Dr Sparks said. 

"The societal risk is the number of exposed people multiplied by ... time, so actually if there are several tours together, that's a factor which will put up the societal risk because there will be more exposed people on the island so the potential for a larger mass casualty [event] goes up. 

"It doesn't necessarily follow that having tours there at the same time is going to reduce the societal risk." 

Responsibility to monitor Whakaari 

Throughout the three days of expert testimony so far this week, both the prosecution and defence have questioned the witnesses on how information generated through the scientific monitoring of volcanoes can be used to manage the risk on the island. 

Defence counsel referenced a document from GNS Science from a week before the eruption that said there was a one in seven chance of an eruption within the next four weeks.

Mr Cairney told the court that document was not shared beyond GNS Science and asked Dr Sparks if he was the volcano observer, would he share that information with government agencies. 

The professor used examples from his time monitoring the Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat, and said: "We would keep the government abreast of our estimates of risk and if there was tangible change from a previous estimate, we would certainly notify them. 

"In the particular case you've given me, there was a small change ... from a previous estimate." 

Mr Cairney also presented to the court a GNS Science volcano alert bulletin that was being drafted as Whakaari erupted, and was "tragically never sent". 

GNS Science volcanologist Dr Gill Jolly gave three days of expert witness last week and told the court the research institute did not have a regulatory role over Whakaari and did not have a contractual relationship with its owners or tour operators to conduct an expert risk assessment. 

GNS Science was one of the original defendants in this case, also charged with breaches of New Zealand's workplace health and safety laws. 

The institute successfully had charges against it reduced and then pleaded guilty to the lesser charge. 

On Wednesday, Dr Proctor read part of his evidence brief to the court, and said it was likely Whakaari had been "underestimated". 

"If it was suggested to me that no-one could have known that Whakaari would erupt in the way it did on December 9, 2019, I would say that is incorrect," he said. 

"While predicting exactly when an eruption will occur is not possible, it is well known that Whakaari would erupt again and would most likely erupt in the same way it has over recent decades, with associated hazards including ballistics and pyroclastic flows and surges." 

Communicating to tourists

Dr Proctor repeatedly told the court he did not offer an opinion on whether GNS Science had a duty to provide public information over the risks and hazards on Whakaari.

But he said the volcanic alert bulletins that were published were not the type of material a lay person could fully comprehend. 

Dr Proctor said, in his opinion, releasing existing hazard maps that depicted GNS Science exclusion zones "would have been very helpful for tour operators, Whakaari Management Limited, the pilots contracted by GNS to fly to Whakaari and other third parties such as the National Emergency Management Agency".

"The fact that this process was used by GNS management to make decisions about access tells me that these calculations were robust enough for sharing. 

"While the maps do contain some technical statistics, they are simply enough to communicate to a member of the public the areas that experts have decided are too dangerous to venture." 

Whakaari was sitting at level two on New Zealand's volcanic alert level system on the day of the disaster and several survivors have previously told the court they had no awareness of what that meant. 

Level three is an eruption.

Dr Proctor said in his opinion the existing volcanic alert level system did not communicate the risk of visiting a volcano to members of the public. 

The trial continues on Thursday. 

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Report on Whakaari/White Island (New Zealand) — February 2020

Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 45, no. 2 (February 2020) Managing Editor: Edward Venzke. Edited by Janine B. Krippner. Whakaari/White Island (New Zealand) Explosion producing an ash plume and pyroclastic surge resulted in fatalities and injuries on 9 December 2019

Please cite this report as: Global Volcanism Program, 2020. Report on Whakaari/White Island (New Zealand) (Krippner, J.B., and Venzke, E., eds.). Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network , 45:2. Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.BGVN202002-241040

Whakaari/White Island

New zealand, 37.52°s, 177.18°e; summit elev. 294 m, all times are local (unless otherwise noted).

Whakaari/White Island has been New Zealand's most active volcano since 1976. Located 48 km offshore, the volcano is a popular tourism destination with tours leaving the town of Whakatane with approximately 17,500 people visiting the island in 2018. Ten lives were lost in 1914 when part of the crater wall collapsed, impacting sulfur miners. More recently, a brief explosion at 1411 on 9 December 2019 produced an ash plume and pyroclastic surge that impacted the entire crater area. With 47 people on the island at the time, the death toll stood at 21 on 3 February 2020. At that time more patients were still in hospitals within New Zealand or their home countries.

The island is the summit of a large underwater volcano, with around 70% of the edifice below the ocean and rising around 300 m above sea level (figure 70). A broad crater opens to the ocean to the SE, with steep crater walls and an active Main Crater area to the NW rear of the crater floor (figure 71). Although the island is privately owned, GeoNet continuously monitors activity both remotely and with visits to the volcano. This Bulletin covers activity from May 2017 through December 2019 and is based on reports by GeoNet, the New Zealand Civil Defence Bay of Plenty Emergency Management Group, satellite data, and footage taken by visitors to the island.

Nearly continuous activity occurred from December 1975 to September 2000, including the formation of collapse and explosion craters producing ash emissions and explosions that impacted all of the Main Crater area. More recently, it has been in a state of elevated unrest since 2011. Renewed activity commenced with an explosive eruption on 5 August 2012 that was followed by the extrusion of a lava dome and ongoing phreatic explosions and minor ash emissions through March 2013. An ash cone was seen on 4 March 2013, and over the next few months the crater lake reformed. Further significant explosions took place on 20 August and 4, 8, and 11 October 2013. A landslide occurred in November 2015 with material descending into the lake. More recent activity on 27 April 2016 produced a short-lived eruption that deposited material across the crater floor and walls. A short period of ash emission later that year, on 13 September 2016, originated from a vent on the recent lava dome. Explosive eruptions occur with little to no warning.

Since 19 September 2016 the Volcanic Alert Level (VAL) was set to 1 (minor volcanic unrest) (figure 72). During early 2017 background activity in the crater continued, including active fumaroles emitting volcanic gases and steam from the active geothermal system, boiling springs, volcanic tremor, and deformation. By April 2017 a new crater lake had begun to form, the first since the April 2016 explosion when the lake floor was excavated an additional 13 m. Before this, there were areas where water ponded in depressions within the Main Crater but no stable lake.

Activity from mid-2017 through 2018. In July-August 2017 GeoNet scientists carried out the first fieldwork at the crater area since late 2015 to sample the new crater lake and gas emissions. The crater lake was significantly cooler than the past lakes at 20°C, compared to 30-70°C that was typical previously. Chemical analysis of water samples collected in July showed the lowest concentrations of most "volcanic elements" in the lake for the past 10-15 years due to the reduced volcanic gases entering the lake. The acidity remained similar to that of battery acid. Gas emissions from the 2012 dome were 114°C, which were over 450°C in 2012 and 330°C in 2016. Fumarole 0 also had a reduced temperature of 152°C, reduced from over 190°C in late 2016 (figure 73). The observations and measurements indicated a decline in unrest. Further visits in December 2017 noted relatively low-level unrest including 149°C gas emissions from fumarole 0, a small crater lake, and loud gas vents nearby (figures 74 and 75). By 27 November the lake had risen to 10 m below overflow. Analysis of water samples led to an estimate of 75% of the lake water resulting from condensing steam vents below the lake and the rest from rainfall.

Routine fieldwork by GeoNet monitoring teams in early March 2018 showed continued low-level unrest and no apparent changes after a recent nearby earthquake swarm. The most notable change was the increase in the crater lake size, likely a response from recent high rainfall (figure 76). The water remained a relatively cool 27°C. Temperatures continued to decline at the 2012 dome vent (128°C) and Fumarole 0 (138°C). Spring and stream flow had also declined. Deformation was observed towards the Active Crater of 2-5 mm per month and seismicity remained low. The increase in lake level drowned gas vents along the lake shore resulting in geyser-like activity (figure 77). GeoNet warned that a new eruption could occur at any time, often without any useful warning.

In mid-April 2018 visitors reported loud sounds from the crater area as a result of the rising lake level drowning vents on the 2012 dome (in the western side of the crater) and resulting in steam-driven activity. There was no notable change in volcanic activity. The sounds stopped by July 2018 as the geothermal system adjusted to the rising water, up to 17 m below overfill and filling at a rate of about 2,000 m 3 per day, rising towards more active vents (figure 78). A gas monitoring flight taken on 12 September showed a steaming lake surrounded by active fumaroles along the crater wall (figure 79).

Activity during April to early December 2019. A GeoNet volcanic alert bulletin in April 2019 reported that steady low-level unrest continued. The level of the lake had been declining since late January and was back down to 13 m below overflow (figure 80). The water temperature had increased to over 60°C due to the fumarole activity below the lake. Fumarole 0 remained steady at around 120-130°C. During May-June a seismic swarm was reported offshore, unrelated to volcanic activity but increasing the risk of landslides within the crater due to the shallow locations.

On 26 June the VAL was raised to level 2 (moderate to heightened volcanic unrest) due to increased SO 2 flux rising to historically high levels. An overflight that day detected 1,886 tons/day, nearly three times the previous values of May 2019, the highest recorded value since 2013, and the second highest since measurements began in 2003. The VAL was subsequently lowered on 1 July due to a reduction in detected SO 2 emissions of 880 tons/day on 28 June and 693 tons/day on 29 June.

GeoNet reported on 26 September that there was an increase in steam-driven activity within the active crater over the past three weeks. This included small geyser-like explosions of mud and steam with material reaching about 10 m above the lake. This was not attributed to an increase in volcanic activity, but to the crater lake level rising since early August.

On 30 October an increase in background activity was reported. An increasing trend in SO 2 gas emissions and volcanic tremor had been ongoing for several months and had reached the highest levels since 2016. This indicated to GeoNet that Whakaari/White Island might be entering a period where eruptive activity was more likely. There were no significant changes in other monitoring parameters at this time and fumarole activity continued (figure 81).

On 18 November the VAL was raised to level 2 and the Aviation Colour Code was raised to Yellow due to further increase in SO 2 emissions and volcanic tremor. Other monitoring parameters showed no significant changes. On 25 November GeoNet reported that moderate volcanic unrest continued but with no new changes. Gas emissions remained high and gas-driven ejecta regularly jetting material a few meters into the air above fumaroles in the crater lake (figure 82).

GeoNet reported on 3 December that moderate volcanic unrest continued, with increased but variable explosive gas and steam-driven jetting, with stronger events ejecting mud 20-30 m into the air and depositing mud around the vent area. Gas emissions and volcanic tremor remained elevated and occasional gas smells were reported on the North Island mainland depending on wind direction. The crater lake water level remained unchanged. Monitoring parameters were similar to those observed in 2011-2016 and remained within the expected range for moderate volcanic unrest.

Eruption on 9 December 2019. A short-lived eruption occurred at 1411 on 9 December 2019, generating a steam-and-ash plume to 3.6 km and covering the entire crater floor area with ash. Video taken by tourists on a nearby boat showed an eruption plume composed of a white steam-rich portion, and a black ash-rich ejecta (figure 83). A pyroclastic surge moved laterally across the crater floor and up the inner crater walls. Photos taken soon after the eruption showed sulfur-rich deposits across the crater floor and crater walls, and a helicopter that had been damaged and blown off the landing pad (figure 84). This activity caused the VAL to be raised to 4 (moderate volcanic eruption) and the Aviation Colour Code being raised to Orange.

A steam plume was visible in a webcam image taken at 1430 from Whakatane, 21 minutes after the explosion (figure 85). Subsequent explosions occurred at 1630 and 1749. Search-and-Rescue teams reached the island after the eruption and noted a very strong sulfur smell that was experienced through respirators. They experienced severe stinging of any exposed skin that came in contact with the gas, and were left with sensitive skin and eyes, and sore throats. Later in the afternoon the gas-and-steam plume continued and a sediment plume was dispersing from the island (figure 86). The VAL was lowered to level 3 (minor volcanic eruption) at 1625 that day; the Aviation Colour Code remained at Orange.

During or immediately after the eruption an unstable portion of the SW inner crater wall, composed of 1914 landslide material, collapsed and was identified in satellite radar imagery acquired after the eruption. The material slid into the crater lake area and left a 12-m-high scarp. Movement in this area continued into early January.

Activity from late 2019 into early 2020. A significant increase in volcanic tremor began at around 0400 on 11 December (figure 87). The increase was accompanied by vigorous steaming and ejections of mud in several of the new vents. By the afternoon the tremor was at the highest level seen since the 2016 eruption, and monitoring data indicated that shallow magma was driving the increased unrest.

The VAL was lowered to 2 on the morning of 12 December to reflect moderate to heightened unrest as no further explosive activity had occurred since the event on the 9th. Volcanic tremor was occurring at very high levels by the time a bulletin was released at 1025 that day. Gas emissions increased since 10 January, steam and mud jetting continued, and the situation was interpreted to be highly volatile. The Aviation Colour Code remained at Orange. Risk assessment maps released that day show the high-risk areas as monitoring parameters continued to show an increased likelihood of another eruption (figure 88).

The volcanic activity bulletin for 13 December reported that volcanic tremor remained high, but had declined overnight. Vigorous steam and mud jetting continuing at the vent area. Brief ash emission was observed in the evening with ashfall restricted to the vent area. The 14 January bulletin reported that volcanic tremor had declined significantly over night, and nighttime webcam images showed a glow in the vent area due to high heat flow.

Aerial observations on 14 and 15 December revealed steam and gas emissions continuing from at least three open vents within a 100 m 2 area (figure 89). One vent near the back of the crater area was emitting transparent, high-temperature gas that indicated that magma was near the surface, and produced a glow registered by low-light cameras (figure 90). The gas emissions had a blue tinge that indicated high SO 2 content. The area that once contained the crater lake, 16 m below overflow before the eruption, was filled with debris and small isolated ponds mostly from rainfall, with different colors due to the water reacting with the eruption deposits. The gas-and-steam plume was white near the volcano but changed to a gray-brown color as it cooled and moved downwind due to the gas content (figure 91). On 15 December the tremor remained at low levels (figure 92).

On 19 December tremor remained low (figure 93) and gas and steam emission continued. Overflight observations confirmed open vents with one producing temperatures over 650°C (figure 94). SO 2 emissions remained high at around 15 kg/s, slightly lower than the 20 kg/s detected on 12 December. Small amounts of ash were produced on 23 and 26 December due to material entering the vents during erosion.

The Aviation Colour Code was reduced to Yellow on 6 January 2020 and the VAL remained at 2. Strong gas and steam emissions continued from the vent area through early January and the glow persisted in nighttime webcam images. Short-lived episodes of volcanic tremor were recorded between 8-10 January and were accompanied by minor explosions. A 15 January bulletin reported that the temperature at the vent area remained very hot, up to 440°C, and SO 2 emissions were within normal post-eruption levels.

High temperatures were detected within the vent area in Sentinel-2 thermal data on 6 and 16 January (figure 95). Lava extrusion was confirmed within the 9 December vents on 20 January. Airborne SO 2 measurements on that day recorded continued high levels and the vent temperature was over 400°C. Observations on 4 February showed that no new lava extrusion had occurred, and gas fluxes were lower than two weeks ago, but still elevated. The temperatures measured in the crater were 550-570°C and no further changes to the area were observed.

Geological Summary. The uninhabited Whakaari/White Island is the 2 x 2.4 km emergent summit of a 16 x 18 km submarine volcano in the Bay of Plenty about 50 km offshore of North Island. The island consists of two overlapping andesitic-to-dacitic stratovolcanoes. The SE side of the crater is open at sea level, with the recent activity centered about 1 km from the shore close to the rear crater wall. Volckner Rocks, sea stacks that are remnants of a lava dome, lie 5 km NW. Descriptions of volcanism since 1826 have included intermittent moderate phreatic, phreatomagmatic, and Strombolian eruptions; activity there also forms a prominent part of Maori legends. The formation of many new vents during the 19th and 20th centuries caused rapid changes in crater floor topography. Collapse of the crater wall in 1914 produced a debris avalanche that buried buildings and workers at a sulfur-mining project. Explosive activity in December 2019 took place while tourists were present, resulting in many fatalities. The official government name Whakaari/White Island is a combination of the full Maori name of Te Puia o Whakaari ("The Dramatic Volcano") and White Island (referencing the constant steam plume) given by Captain James Cook in 1769.

Information Contacts: New Zealand GeoNet Project , a collaboration between the Earthquake Commission and GNS Science, Wairakei Research Centre, Private Bag 2000, Taupo 3352, New Zealand (URL: http://www.geonet.org.nz/); GNS Science , Wairakei Research Centre, Private Bag 2000, Taupo 3352, New Zealand (URL: http://www.gns.cri.nz/); Bay of Plenty Emergency Management Group Civil Defense , New Zealand (URL: http://www.bopcivildefence.govt.nz/); Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust , Auckland, New Zealand (URL: https://www.rescuehelicopter.org.nz/); Sentinel Hub Playground (URL: https://www.sentinel-hub.com/explore/sentinel-playground); Planet Labs, Inc. (URL: https://www.planet.com/); Ben Clarke , The University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, United Kingdom (URL: https://le.ac.uk/geology, Twitter: https://twitter.com/PyroclasticBen); Michael Schade , San Francisco, USA (URL: https://twitter.com/sch).

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White Island, also known in Maori as Whakaari, is an active volcano situated 49 km off the coast of New Zealand's Bay of Plenty region . White Island is easily accessible as tour operators run regular trips to the island from Whakatane , in fact it is one of the most accessible active marine volcanos in the world. Though the majority of White Island is underwater, some 321m of the cone sticks out of the ocean, forming a circular island. Tours of White Island include visiting the ruins of the sulphur factory abandoned in the 1930s, and getting up close to roaring steam vents, bubbling mud pits, hot volcanic streams, sulphur encrusted fumeroles and the amazing lake of steaming acid.

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White Island volcano eruption: NZ court orders tour operators and island managers to pay $10m

Court found those responsible for tour had not conducted adequate risk assessments ahead of deadly eruption

A New Zealand court has ordered the tour booking agents and managers of an island where a volcanic eruption killed 22 people to pay survivors more than NZ$10m ($6.1m) and fined them around NZ$2.6m.

Tour operators White Island Tours, Volcanic Air Safaris, Kahu New Zealand and Aerius, along with the corporate owner of the island, Whakaari Management Ltd, were found to have not sufficiently ensured the safety of visitors to the island, court filings showed.

There were 47 people on White Island, also known by the Māori name of Whakaari, when the volcano erupted on 9 December 2019. Many of the survivors were badly burnt by searing gas and ash. Most of the victims were international tourists from countries including Australia, the US and Malaysia.

Whakaari Management must pay compensation of NZ$4.88m, while White Island Tours must pay NZ$5m and Volcanic Air Safaris NZ$$330,000, Judge Evangelos Thomas said on Friday in his judgment in the District Court of Auckland.

The prosecutor for workplace regulator Worksafe had said during the hearing that the tour operators indicated they did not have the ability to pay fines but argued the judge should impose financial penalties even if they were not paid.

Though the tour operators did conduct risk assessments, they were fundamentally inadequate, Thomas said.

“The safety information tour operators provided to their paying customers was wholly inadequate, not sufficiently informing paying customers about the hazards, the risk, the consequences of an eruption,” the judge said.

The five companies involved were either in liquidation, no longer trading, were in a weak financial position or had no assets, the judgment said.

White Island Tours and VASL have insurance cover of NZ$5,000,000 and NZ$300,000 respectively to pay reparations to victims, though they and the other three companies did not appear to be in a position to pay the remaining fines and compensation, the judgment added.

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‘The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari’ Review: A Seismic Tragedy

A Netflix documentary recounts the eruption of an active volcano off the coast of New Zealand that left several tourist groups struggling to survive.

By Natalia Winkelman

Three years ago on a small island off the eastern coast of New Zealand, several tour groups were trekking near the rim of an active stratovolcano when the site erupted , spouting scalding steam, toxic gases and ash plumes that rose thousands of feet into the air. More than 20 people died, some in the explosion and others who later succumb to their injuries; many more suffered severe burns.

A detailed chronology of the tragedy is relayed in the unembellished Netflix documentary “The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari,” which hinges on interviews with a handful of survivors and people involved in the rescue missions.

White Island (also known by its Maori name, Whakaari) is a gorgeous setting for a documentary, a natural wonder that has long been a destination for geology enthusiasts and thrill seekers keen to peer into a live volcano’s abyss. The film begins by leaning into this wanderlust through imagery and maps of the island, but once we reach the moment of eruption, the mood turns dark.

The director, Rory Kennedy, only lightly explores the science behind the calamity, and the film never stretches beyond a layperson’s knowledge. The film similarly stops short of looking into the organizations and government agencies that may be accountable . Instead, Kennedy seems intent on centering the survivors, who — alongside original photos and videos taken by tourists that day — describe a living hell of fear and agony.

But while this framework guarantees an engrossing disaster story, the choice to ignore the social aftershocks of the eruption leaves viewers without the tools to contextualize the profound pain on display. Once the ash settles, we long for insight, but only the trauma lingers on.

The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari Rated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Watch on Netflix .

Who Were The Whakaari Volcano Victims? All About The Deaths And Survivors

Netflix's documentary, 'The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari,' delves into the tragedy.

At the time of the volcano's eruption, 47 people were visiting White Island, putting their lives in grave danger. “I knew what could happen out there, but you don’t believe it will happen,” one sightseer shared in the trailer. Another chimed in with this devastating comment: “I thought, this was it. We’re going to die on our honeymoon.”

As the documentary shows, rescue workers had difficulty getting to survivors due to the eruption and aftermath, and the evacuation of people from the island was harrowing.

It's understandable to have a lot of questions about the Whakaari volcano eruptions and victims after watching the trailer and documentary. Here’s what you need to know.

Where is Whakaari?

The island, also called White Island, is located in the Bay of Plenty, 30 miles away from the east coast of New Zealand's North Island.

What happened at Whakaari?

On Monday, Dec. 9, 2019 at 2:11 p.m., the Whakaari volcano exploded in a series of violent blasts, per National Geographic . Ash was flung 12,000 feet into the sky and hot debris rained down.

At the time, tourists were visiting the volcano, and several were right next to the volcano’s active vent, National Geographic reported. “This was probably the actual worst-case scenario,” Shane Cronin, an Earth scientist at the University of Auckland, told National Geographic .

How many people were on the island?

At the time of the eruption, there were 47 people on the island, according to The Guardian . Of those, 38 of them came from the cruise liner, Ovation of the Seas, and the people affected came from all over the world. Twenty-four people were from Australia, nine from the U.S., two from the U.K., four from Germany, five from New Zealand, two from China, and one from Malaysia, per The Guardian.

How many victims were there?

Overall, 22 people died in the blast, per RNZ . The victims included Australian brothers Berend Hollander, 16, and Matthew Hollander, 13, along with their parents, Martin and Barbara. Martin Hollander originally from Australia but moved to Chicago for work, RNZ says. They moved to Sydney five years before the tragedy .

Australians Gavin Dallow, 53, and his step-daughter Zoe Hosking, 15, also died in the explosion, but Gavin’s wife survived, although in critical condition. A statement from the family called Gavin a “wonderful son and brother,” noting that “our hearts break at the loss of Zoe at such a young age,” per RNZ.

It took days for authorities to fully identify those who lost their lives in the volcano's eruption, and several of the victims were related, having traveled to the island as a family. According to BBC , the 22 victims included:

• Richard Aaron Elzer, 32, from Australia
• Barbara Jean Hollander, 49, from the U.S.
• Berend Lawrence Hollander, 16, from the U.S.
• Matthew Robert Hollander, 13, from the U.S.
• Martin Berend Hollander, 48, from Australia
• Julie Richards, 47, from Australia
• Jessica Richards, 20, from Australia
• Krystal Eve Browitt, 21, from Australia
• Tipene Maangi, 24, from New Zealand
• Zoe Ella Hosking, 15, from Australia
• Gavin Brian Dallow, 53, from Australia
• Karla Michelle Mathews, 32, from Australia
• Jason David Griffiths, 33, from Australia
• Kristine Elizabeth Langford, 45, from Australia
• Anthony James Langford, 51, from Australia
• Winona Jane Langford, 17, from Australia
• Hayden Bryan Marshall-Inman, 40, from New Zealand.

How many people survived?

Sixteen people survived the blast, according to the Daily Mail , but some were left with life-altering burn injuries. In the trailer, you see the honeymooning couple clasp hands together, both of which are extremely scarred. According to the Manchester Evening News , some of the survivors included:

• Jesse Langford, from Australia
• Kelsey Waghorn, from New Zealand
• Matt Urey, from the U.S.
• Lauren Urey, from the U.S.
• Stephanie Browitt, from Australia
• Brian Depauw, from New Zealand
• Lisa Dallow, from Australia
• Jake Milbank, from New Zealand
• John Cozad, from Australia

Jesse Langford, who was 19 at the time, lost his parents and 17-year-old sister in the explosion. He "had suffered burns to 90 percent of his body, and was unable to attend the funeral of his mother and father, instead watching from the hospital," the Manchester Evening News reported.

Kelsey, a tour guide on the island who is now 26, spent 65 days in the hospital and was put into a coma, the outlet reported. She later had 14 surgeries and had to relearn how to walk.

Lisa Dallow lost her husband and son on the island, and was in a coma for two months. Jake Milbank, 19 at the time, has also undergone extensive recovery after dozens of surgeries. He keeps his followers updated on his progress on Instagram :

The island has been closed to visitors since the explosion, RNZ reports.

The Volcano: The Rescue From Whakaari is streaming now on Netflix.

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Doomed Planet

Volcanoes, the climateers’ latest silly scare story.

• 13th April 2024

• Michael Kile

In an age of increasing hyperbole about natural phenomena it had to appear sooner or later: an alarmist claim that “climate change” (CC) was, could, can and is causing intense volcanic activity on planet Earth. So it was no surprise that a BBC WS CrowdScience team – presenter Caroline Steel , producer Emily Bird and editor Cathy Edwards – attempted last month to answer this question: “ Could climate change lead to more volcanic eruptions? How will a heating planet affect volcanic activity?”

We spend a lot of our time thinking about climate change, but listener Paul [from near Blackpool, United Kingdom] has a question that isn’t usually part of the conversation. He wants to know whether a hotter atmosphere will affect how often volcanoes erupt, or make them more explosive when they do . — CrowdScience  audio at 27 min.

They were probably inspired by this article: Climate change could be triggering more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions . Here’s how.   It was posted on the World Economic Forum website on August 14, 2023, “in collaboration with The Conversation ” . The author, Matthew Blackett , a Reader in Physical Geography and Natural Hazards at Coventry University, suggested that:

♦ Climate change could cause more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions by increasing the weight of water on the Earth’s crust.

♦ When glaciers melt, the water can seep into cracks in the Earth’s crust, causing them to widen and weaken.

♦ This can lead to earthquakes, especially in areas that are already seismically active.

♦ Climate change can also cause more volcanic eruptions by increasing the amount of magma in the Earth’s mantle.

Consider, for example, his fourth claim. The only evidence given is a GSA research article published in November 2017. Yet that same article’s summary stresses the uncertainties:

Over glacial-interglacial time scales changes in surface loading exerted by large variations in glacier size affect the rates of volcanic activity. Numerical models suggest that smaller changes in ice volume over shorter time scales may also influence rates of mantle melt generation. However, this effect has not been verified in the geological record. Furthermore, the time lag between climatic forcing and a resultant change in the frequency of volcanic eruptions is unknown.

The paper’s ten authors claim their modelling reveals “an apparent time lag of about 600 years” between a past climate event and a “change in eruption frequency” in Iceland. Hence any “increase in volcanic eruptions due to ongoing deglaciation since the end of the Little Ice Age “may not become apparent for hundreds of years.”

We shall have to wait a while, dear reader, before we know whether this hypothesis is more than model-driven academic speculation. If you’re an advocate for the warmist cause, how jolly convenient.

Whatever the case, CrowdScience went off to New Zealand to find an answer to listener Paul’s question, and to check out traditional Maori knowledge about volcanoes.

Presenter Caroline Steel had a chat with two volcanologists, Geoff Kilgour , from Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS), Taupo, New Zealand; Heather Handley , Associate Professor of volcanic hazards and geoscience communication with the University of Twente, The Netherlands; and  Pouroto Ngaropo , historian and Matauranga Māori expert in Rotorua, New Zealand.  (A 27 minute podcast is available at CrowdScience .)

Once again there was more speculation than fact, much more sizzle than sausage.

Dr Kilgour speculated that climate change could affect ash distribution after an eruption by causing a “slight change in wind patterns”. His conclusion: “We need to do a lot more work to understand the impacts of CC on volcanic behaviour.” (Audio: 11.0min.)

Dr Handley referred to the 2021 Mount Semeru eruption in East Java, suggesting it began after several days of heavy rain caused the collapse of its lava dome. Yet major eruptions occur here so frequently it is hard to accept bad weather is a significant causal factor, at least for me.

Ms Steel: It’s kind of mind-blowing that heavy rain could cause a series of volcanic eruptions. In my head volcanoes are so strong and steady that the fact they can be affected by rain, or even CC, just feels really surprising.

Dr Handley: It’s definitely an area where we’re starting to think along these lines. What are the other externals – factors outside normal volcanic behaviour – that can influence volcanoes?

Ms Steel: What about the melting glaciers you mentioned earlier, whose effects we might only start seeing at some time in the future? What time scales are we talking about there?

Dr Handley: So far they think it’s about 1,000 years. But being prepared for events in the future that might happen on longer time scales are something we should still be understanding and preparing for. It’s not today, but future generations have to be prepared to deal with it. And so I think it’s very important as a scientist to have a more holistic view of a system to better understand what the impacts and implications might be of change. (Audio: 19.0min.)

Pouroto Ngaropo quoted a Maori prayer. It was, he said, all about connecting people to the land and to the “geothermal energy that bubbles beneath their feet”. This “ancient energy”, he continued, “enables me to connect to the beginning of time, and to the Creator.” From a Maori perspective, mountains are a living and breathing entities. “We have a saying: ‘I am the mountain and the mountain is me’.” As for Maori knowledge, rest assured it is “similar to scientific knowledge.”

Ms Steel: Pouroto works closely with geologist Geoff and his colleagues at the GNS. They share their knowledge so they can better understand the changing landscape. Knowledge of the land has been passed down through generations, an aural record of how volcanoes have behaved in the past, how they have been affected by changing seasons and weather patterns, which is a key part of understanding how they might respond to a warming planet in the future . — audio at 22min.

Pouroto: Our ancestors were a lot more attune to the natural world around them. When you are living deep within the heart of your natural environment you can sense and feel things.

Ms Steel: This wisdom, passed down in song through the ages is culturally and scientifically invaluable; and by combining deep knowledge with cutting-edge scientific research, Pouroto and Geoff are learning even more about the land, with the aim of forecasting eruptions and saving lives . — audio at 25min.

Addressing listener Paul, however, Ms Steel admitted defeat. She ended the episode with this comment:

Ms Steel: When it comes to volcanic activity, it’s not so much the warming Earth we need to worry about, but the melting glaciers, changing winds and extreme weather events. This probably sounds all too familiar. Geoff, Heather and Pouroto are doing their best to build a clearer picture, but the impacts of man-made climate change on the planet – volcanoes included – are very unpredictable. — audio at 27min.

Just as well too. For some reason the CrowdScience episode did not mention the elephant, if not in the room, then in the Bay of Plenty. Neither Maori traditional knowledge – nor scientific knowledge from real-time monitoring by New Zealand’s GNS Science – predicted or prevented this tragedy : the explosive eruption of the active Whakaari / White Island volcano on December 9, 2019. Perhaps it did not fit the program’s CC narrative.

It is difficult today to comprehend how NZ agencies allowed its most active volcano to be promoted as a tourist destination, especially after a similar eruption there in 2016, that one fortunately at night. There were 47 people on Whakaari at the time of the 2019 eruption: 42 paying tourists and five tour guides employed by commercial tour operators. They were all on the crater floor, at different locations along a circular route used by the operator.

Anyone caught in a pyroclastic density current (fast-moving cloud of hot gas and ash), like the one the tourists encountered here, is in deep trouble. Twenty-two people died, either in the explosion or from injuries. Twenty-five were injured, most needing intensive care for severe burns. Two bodies were never found. Recovery efforts were delayed due to seismic and volcanic activity, heavy rain and the presence of toxic gases.

WorkSafe NZ later investigated the tragedy. It charged 13 defendants under s 37 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 . Six pleaded guilty and six had their charges dismissed either prior to or during a criminal trial in the District  Court, Auckland . The remaining defendant, Whakaari Management Limited (WML), was convicted on October 31, 2023. One of the defendants was the NZ Crown Research Institute, GNS Science. It pleaded guilty to an amended charge in May 2023. GNS had been contracting Whakaari tour helicopter companies to fly its scientists to the island. GNS was sentenced by WorkSafe NZ for its failure to consult pilots about the risks of what they were doing between 2016 and 2019.

The most revealing expert witness was GNS Science principal scientist, Dr Gillian Jolly, also Chief Science Advisor for the NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Dr Jolly told the court on July 19 last year that Whakaari / White Island was showing signs of higher activity in the days before the disaster, but “ volcanoes are inherently unpredictable ”.

“We can never definitely say when an eruption might happen ,” she said. “We never talk about volcanic activity being predictable. Prediction implies you know what is going to happen and when. We prefer to talk about forecasting and probability.” There was no mention of climate change as a causal factor. GNS Science had been monitoring Whakaari closely, Dr Jolly told prosecutor Kristy McDonald KC. GNS experts had visited the island five days before the eruption:

Whakaari, being a frequently active volcano, we used the full suite of monitoring [equipment]. On the island, we had two seismometers permanently providing real-time data, we had two global position system instruments, we had two differential optical absorption spectrometers looking at the gas coming out [of the volcano], and we had three cameras pointing at the active vent .

Whakaari was showing “heightened activity” just before the eruption. “For the period towards the end of 2019, we saw a number of parameters that were showing elevated signs. The more unrest indicators, the more likely an eruption.” However, GNS could not use that data to determine when, or if, an eruption would occur: “ Monitoring and forecasting volcanoes is like forecasting weather [or climate change], except you’ve got your eyes closed.”

It would have been impossible for GNS Science to provide an accurate warning with its current technology and understanding of volcanic activity. Even if it could, GNS had “no power” to stop tours from going ahead: “We’re not a regulator.”

A week before the tragedy, the GNS volcanic alert bulletin reported that volcanic unrest continued with “substantial gas, steam and mud bursts” at the vent at the back of the crater. The bulletin stated there was no direct hazard to visitors , but warned that eruptions could occur without warning.

GNS staff were advised to stay further than 520 metres from the vent. Dr Jolly said its experts considered the island “may be entering a period when eruptive activity is more likely than normal”.

According to Amy Williams, a RNZ reporter , the court was shown a draft volcanic alert bulletin, prepared on the day of the eruption, but not sent to tour operators. GNS had kept the alert level at two – meaning there was moderate to heightened volcanic unrest. The bulletin described how Whakaari was “throwing mud and debris 20 to 30 metres into the air above the vent”.

“Overall this level of activity remains within the range of expected from moderate to heightened volcanic unrest,” the draft alert stated. “The current level of activity does not pose a clear hazard to island visitors.”

GNS estimated the chance of an eruption outside of the Whakaari crater rim in the next 28 days was one in seven. A year later, Pouroto Ngaropo was interviewed by SBS Dateline . ’I still ask myself’, he said, ‘why did Whakaari take life? It was like the heart was ripped out of us all.”

I was on Whakaari the week before it exploded. I felt like something was not normal and I could already feel her crying with pain.

There was going to be a risk taking people to the island. As humans we always think we have control but we don’t: we are subservient to Whakaari because she can blow at any time.

Was it a message to us, to address our continual abuse of the Earth? I believe it was a reminder of how we need to look after the environment and look after one another.

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7 thoughts on “ Volcanoes, the Climateers’ Latest Silly Scare Story ”

Volcanic eruptions on a sufficient scale can certainly cause climate change, at least temporarily. The reverse is next door to impossible. This furphy is just another symptom of the current climate hysteria.

As a Suspicious Observer this academy of narrative and consensus building fools-tools need a Bex and a good lie-down or put down. A rainbow Serpent song-line won’t cure their dreaming hypothesis. Hypnosis might.

This is not news — I’ve been saying for years that AGW is causing the spate of recent volcanic eruptions; lovely to have it officially confirmed. As any primary schoolkid knows, if you heat up the planet, its insides will heat up too, and melt, and then blow out. QED.

But seriously, this is but another example of academics piling on the bandwagon, to secure easy funds for their research projects. It strains credulity that anyone, let alone an earth scientist, could think that surface water would travel into those crustal depths, of far denser material and under tectonic pressures, to then turn into steam and blow out again. And why seek Maori traditional knowledge, when we have so many First Nations Knowledge Holders in Oz? They could have told us it’s all because of that Rainbow Serpent crawling around . . .

” … another example of academics piling on the bandwagon, to secure easy funds for their research projects” [from pmprociv above]

I’m appalled, far beyond speechless, by the unbounded, cynical. mendacious grab for research funds by the credited geologists in this article.

Recently retired (and quite old enough to, thank you) from over 50 years as an active geologist in civil engineering, mining and the occasional academic lectures to post grads and docs, this fear mongering of the geologically illiterate for base money grabbing is beyond my patience. It is despicable beyond even a litany of four letter words,

There really is no way back to Enlightenment. Dark ages are again here, now.

A traditional method of controlling a volcano would be to cast a spell on it. The modern way would be for the UN Assembly to have a child declare that volcanic eruptions were caused by human activity like exhaling carbon dioxide. Agree with ianl that the Dark Ages are here again.

We can trust the science, but beware of alchemists and pseudo-scientists …

The Incas knew how to deal with a recalcitrant, hissing, steaming, lava belching volcano. Just toss some virgins in there, and, hey presto, your volcanic gods are appeased and no harm will befall you or your tribe.

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