14 feared dead in New Zealand volcano eruption
December 10, 2019 7:45 AM   Subscribe

Search and recovery operations are ongoing after a volcanic eruption on White Island (also known as Whakaari) in New Zealand. Every burn unit in the country is at capacity treating the victims, who included tourists and guides visiting the normally uninhabited island. Authorities announced, then walked back, a criminal investigation.
posted by Etrigan (36 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Local coverage:

Whakaari / White Island eruption: Six dead, NZ's burns units at capacity
Whakaari / White Island rescue: 'Nothing can really prepare you for an eruption like this'
Whakaari / White Island eruption, day 2: What you need to know

Some Māori definitions that may be helpful:
  • rāhui: state of restriction, tapu
  • iwi: social unit, tribe or confederation of tribes
  • karakia: prayer, ritual chant
  • mana whenua: local tribal or sub-tribal authorities
posted by zamboni at 8:15 AM on December 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


just read some of the Guardian's coverage. I'm going to give the mayor of Whakatane (the nearest town) the benefit of the doubt and assume she's in shock, because man, is she saying the wrong things!

Judy Turner, said she would continue to support tourism on White Island, despite Monday’s tragic events. But with the death toll likely to climb, due to some of the injured being severely burned, hers is a sentiment that is finding little traction.

“At the time they went out [the eruption alert] was a level two, and in the matrix of things that is not considered a high reading ... they have been out numerous times at that level,” Turner said, appearing to defend the tour company’s decision to take 47 people to the island, despite weeks of increased activity.


Also this:

Roy McIntyre, 60, has been a fisherman in Whakatāne for decades and says the volcano “has been meek and mild for about 30 years”, but prior to that it was “a blowing-up, burnt mess for about 20 years”.

“It is a tragic, natural event but I am sure there will be people to blame, and there should be people to blame,” said McIntyre.

“Older people in town envisaged this when they started doing the tours 30 years ago. Because White Island is White Island – you don’t know when it’s going to blow up. I thought it was a matter of time and they were probably lucky to get away with it for this long really.”

posted by philip-random at 8:37 AM on December 10, 2019 [8 favorites]


....... ........


being burned on large parts of your body, and inhaling volcanic ash and corrosive superheated gas is not a good way to be, or to go.

wishes of strength and fortitude to those suffering.
posted by lalochezia at 8:45 AM on December 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


What do you want to bet, that after this more people will want to go to that island than ever before? The local authorities will have their hands full, fending off the instagram invasion.
posted by elizilla at 8:53 AM on December 10, 2019


What do you want to bet, that after this more people will want to go to that island than ever before?

It's a private island and not easily accessed (it's 48km or about 30 miles offshore), so its not an easy take a kayak and grab a selfie type mission. I do wonder if enough pressure will mount on the owners to finally sell to the Government so it can converted from a private reserve to a full centrally managed national park with more stringent control. But its also an economic boon to the local community and a fairly decent tourism component of that region.

Because of some uniqueness in NZ law (including broadly not being able to sue for personal injury - with an extremely high bar to pass for exemplary damages as I understand it, in-exchange for no-fault compensation through a centrally funded accident compensation scheme), there are some unique aspects of NZ's adventure tourism industry that may not be obvious to folks outside of the country and sometimes may not create / seem to create the right incentives for safety, or which makes the situation seem strange to those outside the country. Its a fairly complex situation from what little I've read in the past on it. Didn't want to derail from the tragedy, but did want to point that out.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:45 AM on December 10, 2019 [30 favorites]


[Thinks back to previous life as a geologist who studied volcanoes]

Volcanoes are scary things and, unless historically dormant, deserve to be treated with great respect. Using an active volcano of this type as a tourist attraction seems.... unwise.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:53 AM on December 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


The Guardian ran a story that covered the heroic helicopter rescuers who went right in and pulled out the survivors. Lots of initiative, expertise, and bravery.
posted by Oyéah at 10:06 AM on December 10, 2019 [15 favorites]


"At the time they went out [the eruption alert] was a level two, and in the matrix of things that is not considered a high reading"

It's the last step on the NZ scale before active volcanic eruption and the volcano had been announcing for months that it was likely to kick off. It may be great for adventure tourism, but I can't say I'm super impressed with NZ's system if the owners and companies involved felt free to gamble by dumping employees and people into the crater, knowing they were unlikely to face civil or criminal liability.
posted by tavella at 10:40 AM on December 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


Sooner or later, we're going to hear the phrase "She'll be right".
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:51 AM on December 10, 2019


For a first hand account, see these tweets from someone who was on the island 20 minutes before the eruption.
posted by handwich at 11:45 AM on December 10, 2019 [9 favorites]


knowing they were unlikely to face civil or criminal liability.

The operators can face legal liability in NZ (criminal - e.g manslaughter) or civil (fines and court ordered reparations etc), they just can't typically be sued for personal injury. So the numbers (on fines and reparations where the operator has been reckless etc) are going to look low relative to other jurisdictions - again because they aren't typically compensating for the costs of injury/medical care - that is handled centrally through no-fault coverage to cover medical costs, etc. without needing to see a lawyer or go to court (i.e. trading potential large payouts but the need to go to court and prove a cause of action and potentially sharing in fault, for no-fault coverage). That said I have no doubt that other NZ MeFi's will have (often strong and very personal) opinions on the adequacy of that compensation (especially for long term disability or death or where overseas tourists are involved)

White Island Tours are a registered adventure tour operator, had been audited, etc. They had almost unbelievably won an award for "Safest Place to Work for 2018 (small business category)". I imagine there rightly will be intense scrutiny on whether the regulatory framework and the monitoring/audits for the Adventure Tourism industry are a paper tick in the box exercise or truly determine if the operator is addressing risk appropriately.

There has been a long bubbling tension between safety and adventure tourism in NZ - often tragically highlighted when it is overseas tourists impacted. There is a reason commercial bungee jumping started in New Zealand, and a lot of activities like jet boat tourism etc have been able to take off because some of the risk is transferred to a central pool all employers and operators pay into. It's been an enabler for NZ adventure tourism, but this is (from memory) the largest and most visible directly tourism related mass casualty event in NZ in recent times and should be a real change catalyst for the adventure tourism industry.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:04 PM on December 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


And a reminder to non-kiwis the Māori "wh" is pronounced close to a normal english "f"
posted by mbo at 12:07 PM on December 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


Disclaimer I've had (mostly great) dealings with ACC (our no-fault insurance scheme).

Prior to its introduction back in the 70s people would not give friends rides in their cars due to the possibility of being sued in an accident. We pay into the scheme through income taxes, car registrations, employers pay a levy for industrial accidents etc - if you have an accident you are covered (I was covered for breaking my achilles on holiday in Sydney) - supposedly you are covered for life (wheelchairs etc) - you may get a smallish (by US standards) lump sum for some injuries - they also tend to cover private hospitals, post-op support etc. It does create something of a dual health care system, if you have an accident you tend to get better medical care than if you have an illness, or just plain wear out (something we should fix IMHO).

As I understand it tourists are covered to some extent, I'm not exactly sure how it works long term, we've certainly seen American tourists who've had accidents complaining that they can't sue for extremely large amounts of money
posted by mbo at 12:17 PM on December 10, 2019 [6 favorites]


In case anyone is wondering why people would visit Whakaari/White Island, I have and it was awesome. It was about 10 years ago, by boat. We were issued with hard hats and gas masks and led through the blasted landscape to the rim of the crater to look upon the boiling mud, then led back via a different path. It was an amazing day.

The tour group was very well run and we were briefed extensively on the dangers. And yes, we had to sign to impressive wavers before disembarking.

White Island goes through periods of slightly higher activity. I believe we visited during or just after one of those times (nothing like this week's disaster) but decided that the risk was worth it.

There is definitely going to be questions asked about whether the warning system was appropriate but people are always going to be drawn to unique areas.
posted by AndrewStephens at 1:37 PM on December 10, 2019 [13 favorites]


we've certainly seen American tourists who've had accidents complaining that they can't sue for extremely large amounts of money

One of the stories mentioned that the authorities have said flat out that some of the injured will die, which means they were burned badly enough to be kept alive for a while but too badly to save. Which means that very likely there are people who are just barely sub-lethally burned, and that means a lifetime of medical expenses, and even more so expenses to make life worth living; adaptation support if you were blinded or lost your hands, cosmetic surgery to look as normal as possible. In a country where there's a real social welfare system, maybe that's doable with token payments. It's not in the US.

And I wonder just how many of those visitors actually understood the risks; that they weren't just risking a freak accident, but that they were playing russian roulette. It wasn't a question of if the volcano would erupt but when, and that the company running the tours didn't give a fuck what the activity warnings were.
posted by tavella at 3:45 PM on December 10, 2019 [7 favorites]


I think the company cared. I think if they'd known that the probability of an eruption was even one percent, I doubt they'd have ventured there. What they lacked it seems is a sober grasp of geological inevitability.

In other words, the geological reality is that the volcano was always going to erupt as it did yesterday sometime soon ... but on a geological timeline. Which means, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year, maybe in thirty or a hundred years. Definitely eventually, but probably not that soon. And I suspect we'll soon discover that it had achieved equivalent levels of threat-warning any number of times over the years. So why would this time suddenly be the time?

It's similar to what happens with areas that are prone to flooding. Once a decade. That's way too often to build on. Likewise twice or even once a century. But once you get into a "once every few hundred years" sort of scenario, well that's longer than a lifetime ... so dice get rolled.
posted by philip-random at 5:16 PM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm sure it indeed had gotten to 2 and not erupted. But we are not talking geological timelines here. The last time it erupted was only *three years ago*. And before that a long history of eruptions, landslides, previous massive loss of life. It's unconscionable that they were taking *children* into the crater -- the youngest in hospital is 13, the youngest among the missing presumed dead is 15.
posted by tavella at 5:24 PM on December 10, 2019 [3 favorites]


thanks for the correction. I wasn't aware of the more recent eruptions and was focused more on ...

1975-2000:

White Island was in eruption from December 1975 to September 2000, the longest historic eruption episode.


But even that's way too recent. It now strikes me as very odd that there would be no obvious restrictions put on these tours given the probability of what just happened. Do Kiwis just live more dangerously than the rest of us?
posted by philip-random at 6:21 PM on December 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


I guess somewhat; we have a LOT of tectonic and volcanic activity in a comparatively small area. Auckland is built on and around volcanoes, some of which are still active. Christchurch still shakes on a regular basis, Wellington is like smack damn dab on the Alpine Fault.

For comparison Mt Ruapehu has some of the best and most popular skiing in the North Island, it can go off without warning and there is frequently areas on and around it closed due to volcanic activity.

When a risk is relatively familiar it seems less.
posted by fido~depravo at 7:22 PM on December 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


Do Kiwis just live more dangerously than the rest of us?

They don’t call NZ the Shaky Isles for nothing.

In reality the leading causes of death in NZ are pretty much the same as other countries (cancer, various medical issues, transportation related crashes, etc). But yeah - our largest city is on a volcanic field, most of the country is an earthquake zone, our largest ski fields are on the side of an active volcano (which has been at a stage 2 alert for volcanic active several times over the last decade and erupted in 2007 sending a lahar Into one of the ski field valleys) and we have a supervolcano in the middle of the North Island that has produced two of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions in modern geologic times and could easily go toe to toe with Yellowstone. My childhood home was a few hundred feet away from a fault line and I lazily “learned” not to bother rolling out of bed to take cover for a quake at night unless it had been going for more than 10 seconds. And then there is the Tsunami, flood, and weather related hazards.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:26 PM on December 10, 2019 [10 favorites]


From the NZ Herald live blog

- Twenty-two patients remain on airways support.

- 1.2 million square centimetres of skin are needed for skin grafts for burns victims and these supplies are coming from the United States and Australia.

- estimated that the burns will take 500 hours of operations across all the patients.

I’ve never thought about human skin by the square cm before.....and certainly not in the millions of square cm
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:56 PM on December 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


I’ve never thought about human skin by the square cm before.....and certainly not in the millions of square cm

It's about 60 large people's worth of skin.
posted by atrazine at 8:56 AM on December 11, 2019 [4 favorites]


The 13 year old and his 16 year old brother both died in hospital overnight. I hope at a minimum this tragedy ends the use of the volcano for tourism, despite the local mayor's eagerness for it to be resumed. Kids shouldn't die because their parents are foolhardy or ill-informed enough to take them into a volcano that is giving plenty of warning.
posted by tavella at 3:32 PM on December 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


One thing to realise the locals prepare for a volcano disaster - just not this one - the thing that people have always feared about Whakaari is a much larger eruption, possible collapse of the crater, and tidal waves coming into the communities on the bay looking out over it - that's the disaster the local emergency services hold exercises around.
posted by mbo at 10:59 PM on December 11, 2019 [3 favorites]


I wonder how much of the attraction was the geology, and how much was the frisson of knowing that you were walking across the crater of an active volcano, one that Might! Erupt! at Any! Time!

I suspect a lot of it was the latter. If so, the people promoting it should be prosecuted. Any individual trip was probably safe, but at some point a lethal eruption was almost inevitable.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:27 AM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Locally lots of people pay to walk on a glacier with no risk of death. People like to see/experience unusual/unique things; there doesn't have to be a risk of death. If I was ignorant of the risk, and previous to this latest incident I was, this is the sort of thing I'd love to experience. I'd bet for most it didn't seem any more dangerous than Yellowstone. Otherwise why would they be offering tours to children?
posted by Mitheral at 5:58 AM on December 12, 2019


A recovery mission to the island is currently underway to try and retrieve the remains of those missing. Sounds like it involves NZ Defence Force personal with appropriate chemical protective gear. Hopefully this will bring some comfort to the families and friends of those retrieved.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:51 AM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


The 13 year old and his 16 year old brother both died in hospital overnight.

What a terrible way to die. I hope they were kept sedated.
posted by thelonius at 10:52 AM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


Only two still 'missing' on the island now, after six bodies were recovered on Friday. It is terribly, terribly sad.

In regards to burns, it may take some time for the true death toll to be fully realised. This was true of the Black Saturday bush-fires in Victoria- February 2009. I worked an election after that - I think it must have been the federal one in August- as a mobile pre-poll voter, visiting nursing homes and hospitals in my area, taking votes from people unable to get to the polls on the day (voting is compulsory in Australia so effort is put in to making sure people are able to vote.) August, or July, possibly, 2010, and one of the patients we saw (and didn't bother for a vote as they were clearly incapacitated, and therefore excused) was a burns victim from Black Saturday. Imagine being in intensive care for over a year, and still perhaps not make it home.
posted by freethefeet at 8:49 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]


I called it.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:25 PM on December 14, 2019


Ngāti Awa [a Maori tribe - JiA] paid $9 million for White Island Tours, now it's worth 'close to zero'

Lots of interesting and troubling information in that article, including this:
.... There were, however, indications that safety equipment was not suitable for all visitors.

"The safety gear we provide (hard hat and gas mask) is of adult sizing and therefore doesn't always fit to a child's head," the company's website said.

Children did go to the island with schools getting special low-season rates to visit the island, the website said.

During July school holidays children went free with a paying parent.

There was a long-standing tradition of education trips to the island by children.

The company's blog, which ran since the early 2000s reported many visits by school children, including a group of Pukekohe High School students on June 2007, who recorded PH values and temperatures of steam water and sulphur fumeroles on the island while wearing T-shirts with "Hot and Steamy" logos.
Not that a hat and gas mask would have helped much on this occasion, I think, but the attitude is pretty alarming.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:36 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


Note when they say "Level 3 and above we liaise more directly with GNS but that level 2 is still within our operational guidelines" -- Level 3 is only when the volcano is actively erupting. Whakaari has been back at Level 2 for days, but there's still an high risk of eruption. So they were not paying any attention to risks. If the volcano was not actually erupting they were running tours across it, to the tune of 18,000 people last year, some as young as 5 years old according to another article. I think we can all agree that 5 year olds can't meaningfully consent to risk being roasted alive. People were absolutely bound to get killed, and more will be killed if they are allowed to continue.

The thing about "disclaimers" is that we sign them all the time, and they never mean much; there's always the assumption that it's just ass-covering, that the people running the operation have your safety in mind. I wonder if the tourists had been given an honest disclaimer, one that said "decisions about this trip have been made not by scientific evaluation of the dangers or with your safety in mind, but strictly in the service of the company's financial interests, think about how that relates to the fact you can't sue us for anything under NZ law", how many would have still thought it was a jolly day trip for the kids, or if cruise lines would have thought it was a great port stop.
posted by tavella at 10:02 AM on December 16, 2019


Strictly speaking, they can sue for exemplary damages, and might even win. And the reason they can't sue for restorative or punitive damages is because of a universal insurance scheme that is intended to deal with the main problems in suits to get cover for personal injuries,namely that there isn't always an obvious person or org to recover from, and they may not have deep enough pockets.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:26 AM on December 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


Oh, I'm not saying the US system is better, because it's pretty terrible, but in this particular situation, there does not appear to be anything stopping them from restarting tours and enormous financial and local political pressure to do so, while in the US the fact that they would not be able to get insurance would at least keep them from killing more people.
posted by tavella at 11:02 AM on December 16, 2019


There is considerable interest in stopping them and considerable pressure to stop them. Government is talking about regulating them out of existence (the volcano is on private land which is an anomaly that helped make this disaster policy, government land is managed differently). As per JiA's link just above, the perceived value of the business is near-zero now. Much of the local news coverage is horrified re-examination of the circumstances, not just whether laws were adequate, but whether the operators were in breach of the provisions that do exist.

I mean you're right that absent a law change, a business like this could continue to operate in theory, but it's not true that nothing is stopping them. Public opinion, inability to get finance or find customers, and likely more vigorous and stringent enforcement are all against them.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:33 AM on December 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


The legal/business/regulatory aftermath of this is going to be an ongoing mess for sure. Realistically I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years Whakaari/White Island is part of the tourist product again in someway. Maybe as a close to shore (but not landing) boat tour that includes sea life watching / fishing etc, or a helicopter fly-by. I can't see on-island tours being accepted for registration again under the adventure tourism regulations anytime soon. It's just too visible a risk now - and I can't see how any operator will be able to operate now without that registration. The real questions to me are will there be a significant crackdown on adventure tourism companies operating outside of the regulatory framework in other tourism areas (jet boating, helicopter tours to glaciers etc), and how will the framework be altered to truly address risk while balancing economic incentives. That is going to be tough.

Separately the NZ Government has announced a $5m fund for helping small business impacted by shutdown of a major tourist component for the region. The major tour operator, was owned by the local Iwi - Ngāti Awa. Their 2019 Annual Report places a huge amount of focus on using tourism to support the social, cultural, and economic advancement of the Iwi and Maori in the region. White Island Tours was the heart of that - and as mentioned previously in the thread it may be a complete loss. It's unclear if the various owners or operators of the tours (helicopter or boat) may be able to benefit from the fund in anyway, but its a difficult question that will need to be addressed given the impact to the Iwi and just how central tourism is.

On the legal side it seems now - from multiple media reports and speculation - that lawyers for the victims will take action against Royal Caribbean in Florida. There is past precedent for cruise ship operators being successfully sued for death or injury that occurs on a off-ship tour in NZ. But there are some big questions that people are starting to circulate as to liability, which are different from other incidents:

- Whether the eruption was an unforeseeable “act of God"
- What was the level of contributing negligence not just by the tour operator, but by the victim, and possibly GNS or the island owner.
- I wouldn't be surprised if the decision to send victims back on long medical flights from NZ to Australia will factor as a contributing factor to recovery/death of those who have since being evacuated there.

In case anyone is interested, the ACC (the no-fault coverage for victims) put out a page detailing what victims can claim. For international tourist victims it basically amounts to medical costs, a small fixed contribution to funeral costs, and a small survivor's one-off payment (which realisticly would probably be travel costs to NZ and back at best). For NZ residents (either killed on injured) there is an addition of up to 80% lost wages/salary plus home/child care support for injured. The numbers for funeral costs and survivor benefits are low.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:39 AM on December 16, 2019 [2 favorites]


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