A sixth person is confirmed dead as rescue efforts have given way to a grim recovery operation a day after a volcano erupted at a popular tourism site in New Zealand. Monday's blast left 30 injured and eight missing and presumed dead. Burn units at local hospitals have been pushed to capacity and calls are emerging to investigate the safety of tourism at New Zealand's most active volcano.
New Zealand Police confirmed Tuesday that an injured victim taken from White Island, also known by its Maori name Whakaari, died at a hospital in suburban Auckland that night, bringing the death toll to six, The Australian reports. Officials warned Tuesday night that positively identifying the deceased could take time owing to the "severe" nature of the injuries suffered.
Mark Law, a commercial helicopter pilot who has led tours to the island for a decades told The Guardian he and other pilots rescued 12 victims immediately after the eruption, concerned that no one else would come for them. Law described seeing people "dead, dying and alive, but in various states of consciousness."
"The burns were horrific," Law said. "A lot of the people could not talk. It was pretty quiet. The only real words were things like, 'help.' They were covered in ash and dust. We were picking them up, and skin was coming off in our hands."
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlI9pYWouIU]
Others tried to rescue survivors using boats. Michael Schade, a U.S.-based engineer, chronicled the aftermath in a series of photos and videos posted to Twitter and later distributed by European press agencies.
Schade wrote that his family had left the island only 20 minutes before the eruption: "[We] were waiting at our boat about to leave when we saw it."
"The scale of this tragedy is devastating," New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said during an address to Parliament on Tuesday where she thanked helicopter crews who landed on the island to rescue survivors. "Police and defense force personnel have taken a number of aerial reconnaissance flights over the island since the eruption. However, no signs of life have been detected."
Police now believe that 47 visitors were on the island when it erupted at 2:11 p.m. local time Monday and launched thick clouds of ash 12,000 feet into the air. Half of the visitors are Australian, while nine of them are Americans, police said; other visitors on the island were from New Zealand, China, Germany, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.
The survivors range in age from 13 to 72, according to New Zealand's chief medical officer, Pete Watson. Doctors from New Zealand's four hospitals with burn units described to The Guardian an array of injuries, including severe external burns from hot gas, ash and debris, to inhalation burns from the sulfur dioxide, methane and other gases spewed during the eruption.
GeoNet, which monitors geological hazards in New Zealand, placed the volcano alert level at a three out of a five-point scale during the eruption; it remained at that level Tuesday. A week before the incident and leading up to the eruption, the alert level was at a two.
Many people were left questioning why tourists were still allowed to visit the island after seismic monitoring experts raised the volcano's alert level last month.
"These questions must be asked and they must be answered," Ardern said in Parliament.
[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/1211volcano/]
Information for this article was contributed by Kim Bellware, Lateshia Beachum, Allyson Chiu and Deanna Paul of The Washington Post; and by Nick Perry and Rod McGuirk of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/11/2019