The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari (2022) Movie Script
It was a beautiful day.
You could feel the heat from the volcano.
You could feel that the ground was warm.
You kind of get
these beautiful yellow colors.
Dark, dark oranges as well.
I mean, just colors everywhere.
Steam popping up out of the ground...
It was an absolutely breathtaking sight.
It looked like Mars or something.
There was a lot more steam
than I thought there would be.
You knew there was something
beautiful and terrible,
and you wanted to see it...
but our tour guides just said,
"Do not go near the edge of the crater."
I was getting really anxious.
And I talked to our tour guide,
and I asked him,
"What do we do if there is an eruption,
because I'm getting
a little nervous here?"
I love my wife more than anything
but being anxious is not
an unusual situation for her
so I did just brush it off
for the most part.
They even said the words,
"It's not going to erupt."
As a young Kiwi,
what better place to grow up?
You got the hills,
and the hunting and the fishing.
And the ocean to swim in.
You know, it... it... there's nothing better.
Whakatne is a beautiful
community, full of adventure.
Geographically, we are
on the east coast of the North Island.
Auckland's here.
And then down the coast is Whakatne.
People would pronounce it
"Wock-a-tain" or "Feck-a-tah-nee" or
"Wock-a-tah-nee" or whatever.
But it's a small community
that has a lot of love at the heart of it.
There's 38,000 people in Whakatne.
We have uh,
51 percent non-Mori, you know,
and 48 percent Mori.
And our
communities support one another.
And together,
we have got a beautiful area,
which includes
the living active, breathing volcano,
Whakaari.
The English name, "White Island."
White Island is about 48
kilometers off the coast of Whakatne.
When you're driving down the coast,
you look out across
the horizon and you see the large
plumes of white smoke
coming out of the crater.
Absolutely amazing. It's just
the raw beauty of nature.
In our folklore,
we come from the mountains.
We actually are descendants of Whakaari.
And we are the protectors
of the Island itself.
She is an awesome energy
and power unto her own right.
But she's also very special
in terms of tourism.
People love White Island.
And so many people
are connected to White Island Tours here.
Our restaurants,
our motels,
everything... our shops, our boutiques...
All of those rely on people that
adventure tourism brought to our town.
Our wedding was
the most perfect magical day ever.
I don't think I ever smiled
that much in my entire life.
I'm an adventure seeker.
She is absolutely not an adventure seeker.
I'm more of a laying-out type of girl,
or um... just, relaxing
at a beach, or something like that.
So for our honeymoon,
we started looking at cruises.
We found this one
for New Zealand and we looked at it.
It was like, "Oh this is great!
New Zealand has all this amazing geography
and attractions. This seems perfect."
My sister and I,
we really like anything
that's gonna give us a lot of adrenaline,
and I suppose,
put us at some kind of enjoyable risk.
Oh, fuck!
Woo!
So we jumped off the Auckland Tower.
We went black water rafting.
My mom and dad
had previously been on a few cruises,
and they really enjoyed them.
And they brought it to us,
my sister and I, the idea
of going on a cruise to New Zealand.
And on that cruise, we were given the
options of excursions onto the mainland.
I would pick out
an excursion one day,
and Matt would pick out
an excursion for a different day.
So December 9th was actually
Matt's day to pick out an excursion.
I'm into everything science.
And it sounded really interesting,
like an actual volcano
that you can walk up to and look into.
White Island
was something different
that you wouldn't normally be able to do,
being one of
the world's most active volcanoes.
I mean, from the
description, it was a nice easy hike.
It's not like you need rock climbing gear
and everything else to get up there.
It was, just walk up to the crater
and look in and see this amazing volcano.
They made it sound exciting,
they didn't make it sound dangerous.
And I was like,
"Okay, that... it looks good."
You know, we looked at
the description, and I was like, "Okay."
We live in Hamilton in New Zealand,
and I'm a full-time pastor at a church.
My daughter, she'd been studying through
school geology and volcanic activity,
and I said to her, "We should go
while we have the opportunity to go."
And then for my 50th birthday,
she'd surprised me with tickets
to go out to Whakaari.
Monday morning, it's quiet.
There's not a lot of traffic around.
We arrived at
the tour office and we read through
a couple of safety documents,
and then were asked to sign
just our contact details
and next of kin details.
I know there's a risk
and I'm there with my daughter,
I'm not going to put her in danger.
But at no point did I ever fear
what we were actually doing.
- Morning!
- Morning.
That day, there were
a few boats that toured the Island,
and we were in the Phoenix.
We left the wharf,
traveled out on
the river for five or ten minutes.
You cross the river bar
heading out into the open ocean...
And then from there on to White Island.
We departed from
the main cruise ship around 9:00a.m.
We took an hour-long
bus ride to Whakatne,
to the port where we were taking off from,
with 40 or so other tourists.
We all got onto the Te Puia,
and the tour guide said
it was a brand new ship.
I think they just gotten it that year.
There were four guides
on the Te Puia.
They were locals to Whakatne,
and they were very excited to tell us
about the history of White Island.
The morning of December 9th,
it was Hayden, Tipene,
Jake, and myself as guides.
We prepped the boat and then
we just left like every other day.
Closer to shore, we'll take you on a fully
guided tour of the inner crater area.
And this will take approximately
an hour to an hour and a half.
My younger brother,
Hayden, loved the outdoors
and he had a passion for summer.
And in 2009, he started
as a tour guide, guiding in Whakaari.
Hayden kept a detailed diary
of every trip that he went to the Island.
And he'd done 1,111 trips.
That's amazing.
I did not know that was
Hayden's 1,111th trip to the Island. No.
Hayden's probably
one of the longest standing guides.
He helped train me
at work, and then, yeah,
after work we'd go
to the local fishing club,
or we'd take trips
up to the Tarawera Falls.
He was always up for an adventure.
He developed a huge passion
for the whole environment.
Not just Whakaari,
and not just the volcano.
The gusts were blowing,
the swell was quite large.
A lot of the poor passengers actually were
being moved to the back of Te Puia
cause they were feeling quite seasick.
I was sitting
with my family, we were kind of...
not making fun of them
but laughing a little bit,
smirking to ourselves.
We quite enjoyed being on the water.
And we were enjoying the bumpy ride.
We had no idea
how rough the seas were going to be.
We were on that boat
for probably 90 minutes.
And I would say, at least seven or eight
people were vomiting just 'cause
the entire ship would pitch up
and then it would pitch back down,
and you would see ocean then sky,
then ocean then sky, then ocean then sky.
I was so close to throwing up.
I mean, I was literally
like, holding my stomach like this.
It's an hour and a half
out there and an hour and a half back.
Some days, you can go
out there and it can be rough.
It can be horrible. And if you're
not used to being on a boat for an hour,
your sea legs go pretty quickly.
Hence, there was another option as well.
You could take a helicopter
and that was only a 20-minute flight.
Waking up that day
for me was a little bit of nerves,
a little bit of stress.
This is my first day where
I was allowed to fly passengers solo.
I went to to New Zealand
initially for my license.
Just looking for
a good place to learn to fly.
On a clear day,
if you're taking off from the mainland,
you'd be able to see White Island.
You can fly in a straight line for it.
And the conditions that day, they were
just... they were perfect conditions.
As the Phoenix got
real close to the Island,
the crew are starting
to prepare us for getting off.
And my daughter said, "Let's go Dad.
I want to be first on the Island."
The tour started and uh...
we just slowly walked.
The two tour guides,
one of them would go first
and one of them would go last, and
as a group we would stay between them.
It's kind of like
a scene out of Jurassic Park
when you approach it.
Landing on White Island, first time for me
was like landing on the moon kind of,
because it's such
a surreal kind of environment.
So after we landed,
I gave them the safety briefing.
And I start walking towards the crater.
Most of
the volcano is underwater.
So you're only seeing the top of it.
White Island is a stratovolcano.
When it erupts, it doesn't tend to have
lava flows like the Hawaiian volcanoes.
It tends to put down layers of rocks
and ash, and build itself up that way.
When the Te Puia
arrived at the Island,
we had to get in these small...
they call them "zodiac boats."
They're just inflatable rubber boats.
There's just a really
quick trip to the Island.
Yeah, about a minute or two.
Then they arrived
at this very rickety cement jetty
with a rusted metal ladder on it.
You had the sounds
of the waves crashing onto the beach,
washing up onto the shore which gave
that sea breeze that smell of the salt.
And then you also have
this almost like a...
a strong malodorous smell of sulfur.
It looked quite barren. No signs of life.
When we walked off that
jetty and got our first real glimpse...
I had a picture in my head
of what a volcano would look like and
this was not it.
No lava. Just lots and lots of steam.
It was very beautiful,
but I felt like we were very much
in the middle of nowhere.
From there,
we created separate groups.
My guides on the Island
were Hayden and Tipene.
Tipene was, I believed to be learning.
Hayden was showing him the ropes.
Tipene was very inquisitive...
always asking questions, you know.
Proud to be a Mori.
He was excited to have that job.
He enjoyed it, going out
on the boat, mixing with people.
He loved telling them
all sorts of stories,
Mori myths and legends.
He wasn't supposed to work that day.
We were going to do some shopping.
But he was called into work to fill in
for someone and then he went to work.
These tour guides
and pilots and skippers,
they know the Island so
well, down to every last rock.
They know Whakaari more than anybody else.
Alright, everyone! Uh,
welcome to White Island.
I'll be your guide today
for our little tour around the Island.
They gave us a hard hat
that had a chin strap on it,
and then they gave us a respirator.
So what we're gonna do is
we're gonna head around the side here
up to that main crater.
Uh, stop at a few points
of interest on the way.
I'll let you know
some information about the Island.
Um, so yeah, but
as long as everyone's all good,
we'll start our tour. We'll get going.
The first group
left pretty promptly
after having a short safety brief.
We were still
collecting our group together.
So what's this for?
So you're going to suck on them
and it's going to help produce saliva.
So that any irritation
that you get from the steam itself,
it's just going to help soothe it.
So you're not coughing so much.
The Island track is about a
singular loop that you start at the beach.
Once you reach the Crater Lake,
you turn around
and make your way around the Island.
And then back
to the mouth at the entrance.
You got quite a bit of gas
on the Island that tries to escape.
It's something that has
to work its way up through a more viscous
muddy substance.
So you kind of get that bloop-bloop,
those kind of noises going on.
So what's happening is
the sulphur's coming up with the steam.
It's crystallizing,
falling back down on top of itself,
and then it forms a
chimney-like structure, like on a house.
And so we call it
the sulphur chimney area.
The landscape...
it's rock and ash and mud.
But then strewn amongst
these grays are sulphur deposits
that are the most beautiful bright yellow,
and bright white crystals
that seem to sparkle in the sunlight.
And you actually get
the feeling of the vastness
and the power
of what you're encroaching on.
This glimmer of, you know, Mother Nature
at her most beautiful,
but at her most deadly.
Our guide said that the lake
is normally a beautiful bluey-green,
and that day it was white
because perhaps overnight,
there'd been some kind of activity
that had caused ash
to fall back down on the lake.
I think it happens quite often.
And for me the guides were good
with it, so I was good with it.
So we start walking up
towards the crater.
We stopped to take
some photos every couple yards or so,
and I talked to our tour guide
and I asked him,
I said, "So when was the last eruption?"
Because I'm get... my...
I'm getting a little nervous here.
He said there was one
in 2013, one in 2016,
and I'm like, "Well it's the end of 2019
now and I'm getting really nervous."
Hayden mentioned
the Island was at a Level-Two risk.
He didn't describe
what that means at the time.
Um, but he did say it's at a higher risk
of activity, which to me was worrying.
Level One, Level Two
didn't really mean a lot.
Level One, you know, not much happening.
Level Two was heightened activity.
And then Level Three
was an eruption so, you know that...
There was a massive amount of scope
between Level One and Level Three.
We made our way
back down to where we had left off.
We got back onto the Phoenix
and were just getting ready to leave.
We began to chat
with one of the tour guides
about how
all the volcanic activity at
White Island had been either overnight
or when nobody had been there.
So, it was almost like
it was being kind to people to visit.
It was like "I'll erupt
when you're not there" sort of thing.
As we left the Island and headed back,
I then look back up towards the crater.
I can see the tour from the other boat.
It was always pretty cool
to get up to the crater
and just hear everyone gasp and say,
"Wow," and "Oh my God, this is amazing,"
and all start snapping photos.
We'd get geologists coming out to see it
and really kind of have a look at it.
And then you get the other end
of the scale, which would be like,
"I just want a photo of the crater.
I just want this for Instagram."
We got to the top of the crater,
I would say probably
around two o'clock in the afternoon.
You're just looking down into this
gaping, never-ending pit of steam.
It's an intimidating sight.
They gave us another opportunity
where we could take pictures
of us in front of the crater.
I noticed another ship,
the Phoenix, had just departed the Island,
and then we hung out
up there for a few minutes,
and then started the journey back down.
I'm thinking,
"Okay, we're on our way down.
The tour is coming to an end."
So I'm feeling a little bit better.
Because they were
from a cruise ship,
we were sort of on quite a
tight time schedule.
So we were moving pretty quick.
We're on our way back to the jetty.
The other tour
is probably 10 minutes behind us,
and so we're leaving the crater, and
Hayden is coming up towards the crater.
From the crater you kind of loop back,
then it's another 500 meters
or so to the beach.
I had four passengers
that day, two couples.
And at that stage, that's
where we passed them with the boat,
the groups that were walking
towards the crater.
I did recognize Hayden
and said hi to Hayden and...
while he made his way up
towards the crater with his tour group.
We made our journey
up to the acid lake.
We could see the bubbling in
between the clouds of steam
that were wafting up into our faces.
Hayden had told us that we could only
stay there for maybe two to three minutes,
just enough time to
have a good look and take some photos
because the chemicals
that were being released at the top
there were a lot more harmful.
Everyone was rushing
to get a photo opportunity.
It was time to move on, single file.
My sister was
right up the front with Hayden.
I was with my parents
towards the middle of the group.
About halfway down to the
jetty, there were these two water streams,
and they came
from different parts of the Island.
So the tour guides actually had us stop
and stick our fingers
in the water and actually taste it.
You could actually taste
the different mineral contents.
I had just tasted the water,
and I had my back to the crater,
and I heard one of our
other tourists say "Hey, look at that!"
And you turn around and see this little
black cloud coming out of the volcano.
It didn't look intimidating.
I actually took a picture of it.
It was just like
a chimney smoke coming up. No sound.
We all turn around to see
what almost looked like a black firework,
or like a dementor
from Harry Potter with a black long tail.
So we all whipped out
our phones, started taking photos.
Shortly following,
there was another larger bang,
followed by a massive, even larger
group of rocks, flying into the air,
and then slowly that began
to increase in intensity and size.
I knew... I knew instantly.
This is, this is bad news.
This is bad news. We need to run.
I turned around
and saw the plume.
It was already taller than White Island.
I knew immediately what was going on.
My brain had just... was in overdrive
and just trying to go as fast as
it could to try and work out what to do.
Now behind me,
I hear Kelsey just yell
"Run!" and then it was on.
- Go, go, go!
- Go, go, go!
- Annie!
- Annie!
Anybody?!
At that point, I'm frantic.
I'm living my worst nightmare.
We hear Hayden
up at the front yelling to run,
at which point panic set in,
and we all
just started running for our lives.
I had my parents right on my heels.
You could feel the shadow
of the explosion rise up behind us.
We managed to run
and take shelter behind
a very large outcropping of rocks just
before the ash cloud overtook us.
It was just a black void.
All you could hear was just the sound
of rumbling and just the roaring.
At that point, there was,
there was nothing I could do.
We were going around to the
next bay which was just around the cliff,
and that's when it erupted.
- Oh my God!
- Oh my God! Oh no.
I'm watching it
go up and it's beautiful.
The white is pure white,
the black is dark.
It kind of is just... an awesome moment.
Within seconds,
what was beautiful went eerily sinister.
This ash cloud
started rolling down over the cliff.
The crew are realizing what's happened.
The boat has started
to speed up significantly.
We're still outside. The crew are calling
everybody into the cabin.
Okay, everybody inside right now.
- Go inside, go inside!
- Go, go go!
Jesus!
We were walking towards the
coast, and one of my passengers asked me,
"Should we run?"
And I looked over my shoulder and
that's when I saw
this massive eruption going on.
I remember looking up
over my left shoulder
and seeing these projectiles
arching towards us as well.
To me, it looked
like it was going up thousands of feet
and it just wasn't ending.
I looked over at the helicopter,
which would have been about
three to four hundred meters away from me.
So I... that's not an option whatsoever.
Option Two was go for some water.
So I told them to run for the water.
Once I got to the pier,
I just went and jumped in.
I remember hitting the water and
just holding my breath as long as I could.
Everything just went black.
I just remember
rocks hitting me and pelting my hardhat.
It was the darkest thing
I've ever seen in my life,
darker than any night I've ever
experienced, just pitch black.
If you read
any literature on pyroclastic flows,
people don't walk out.
I knew the odds of getting out
of the back of it, so yeah...
we just had to take shelter
and cross our fingers, really.
I held my sunglasses and my gas mask
to my face and just didn't let go.
I hear other people yelling.
It's just horrific.
I vividly remember feeling
like my back was being burned off.
My arms and legs were burned so badly,
so quickly, I never even felt them.
I heard Matt say,
"I'm sorry, Lauren."
And that broke my heart.
I hold on to his hand
because I thought, "For sure,
we're gonna die today and I just want
our bodies to be found together."
The smell was overwhelming.
The heat alone was just unbearable.
The superheated steam
just um, burning me alive.
I did my absolute best
not to breathe at all,
to keep my mouth shut,
to keep my eyes closed.
I tried moving into the fetal position,
just let my back take brunt of the force.
You know,
underwater there's no noise.
And you're just waiting for
kinda, you know, some light to reappear.
It feels like you just don't know
when it's going to end,
because it's just no light, just nothing.
At one point, there was a bit
of light. I remember looking at it.
I thought, "Thank God for that."
I started swimming towards it
but then it disappeared again.
I tell Matt I love him.
I yell it every two seconds.
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
And all I can hear
is him screaming in pain.
I've never heard him yell like that ever.
The pain was just excruciating.
The burns went through all my clothes.
Two to three minutes
was the entire eruption event.
It was the most terrifying
two minutes of my life by far.
I thought "This is it.
This is my last day on this planet.
We're going to die on our honeymoon."
I remember
looking out of that window,
and I now can't see
the Island at all. It's gone.
Time for me felt
like it was going slower.
And I always said, "Look, if
anything ever would happen to me,
I feel like I have lived, you know,
for my age, a very good full life,
and I'm satisfied to where I got."
But at that time I realized, "Nope,
I'm not ready to let this go just yet.
I think I'm just gonna keep on eh...
trying my best
to get out of this situation alive."
The ash started to
settle on the surface of the water,
light started to reappear,
and that's when I came back up.
I looked behind me towards the Island.
You could see that all the... it was still
a fine amount of ash still in the air
kind of falling down onto the island.
First thing I did was
yell out Lauren's name.
I was in such bad shape,
I was afraid she had died.
So I just
remember being so scared.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
So eventually...
when I saw her moving,
I think she said, "I'm here, I'm here."
That was the biggest relief I've ever felt
in my life when she responded.
That was my worst nightmare
would be if I survived and she didn't.
That would be worse than anything else.
I wouldn't have been able
to live with myself.
Once the eruption ceased,
I suppose I was out of shock, I just
stood up and I walked a few meters over.
We were a small distance
away from the acid lake.
Uh, there was screaming
and shouting, um, crying.
I could see some people rolling
around on the ground, um... struggling,
in severe pain,
which was a horrible sight to see.
Just gradually... it just got
less, and then it just stopped and
it was still and it was quiet.
And so I thought,
"Well it's now or never."
So got up and started yelling
at everyone to follow me
and get up and
then started heading back to the jetty.
For me, personally,
physically, I was perfectly fine.
But everybody who was on the Island during
the eruption, none of them were okay.
Nobody managed to escape that steam.
That steam, you're talking
about 200 Celsius.
So that's... you come out looking
like a boiled chicken, pretty much,
to put in a rough way.
I just looked down at my arm and
there's just like an entire layer of skin
just flopping off.
I mean, I knew I was in bad shape
and I knew she was in bad shape.
The only thing on my mind was,
"We are getting off this Island now."
Please run. Run! Please run.
I was really struggling to walk.
I fell a couple of times.
Matt was burnt a lot worse than I was
because he was wearing a lot less clothes
than I was, but he was helping me.
I was running pure adrenaline.
I knew roughly where the jetty was
and that was where I was going.
At that point, I could see
one of the groups walking towards the pier
and they all started
collecting at the pier.
Twenty people or so waiting to be helped.
I didn't know we were going to do this,
but the skipper took the boat back
to where we'd just come from.
And as we headed back there,
we went into the shadow
of the ash cloud so it went dark.
Oh Jesus Christ.
Hey Whakatne
Coast Guard, Phoenix, do you copy?
I heard the call come through
the VHF, of the skipper that I knew,
sounding very distressed,
"There's people on the Island
and she's erupting."
And you could hear the distress
in his voice that this was serious.
Instantly, my phones just started ringing.
I then ran across the car park out to the
river where you could see White Island.
Sure, enough.
It was a big cloud above the Island
and it wasn't stopping.
Jesus.
It was only
about five minutes later
he's asking again where the help was,
so that emphasized the distress
that they must have been under.
They're calling for help
and just a couple minutes later,
they're asking, "Where is that help?"
Someone came
into our office just after 2:00p.m.,
and told us that Whakaari was erupting.
We don't have a direct line of sight
to Whakaari, but over the hills,
we could see a fairly impressive cloud.
Another staff member said,
"Oh, well. There's the cameras.
Let's go check the cameras."
And we saw what, you know,
were basically small black dots,
but we knew that those were people and
that's when
for us then it registered that
there were people on there.
We were working.
We had a deadline.
We started hearing the sirens
and we're like, "What's going on?"
I drove down
to the Mataatua reserve,
pulled up, ran up,
ran across that big grassy patch.
We knew something was wrong.
The plume was bigger than usual.
People were just staring
at Whakaari erupting, basically.
I was at home
and I saw the breaking news.
People were starting to
arrive at my house and...
geez, I was still
trying to think myself
and get it, you know?
Just wondering...
I was actually
at a Mori funeral,
and I could feel through the energy
of my speaking there
that something wasn't right.
When I went to look,
I could see the smoke coming up,
and it wasn't
a normal volcanic cloud above Whakaari,
it was very dark and dense.
When I realized it was real,
I actually just broke down and cried.
There was a bit of confusion
initially in terms of who the tourists
were that went on the Island,
and actually who had taken them there.
But we were certain
that there were people left on the Island
at the time of the eruption.
We put the call out for help
to the Whakatne Coast Guard,
and they steamed out towards White Island.
But that's an hour and a half trip by sea.
It was frustrating because we had to, um,
you know, our boats to get that far,
it's always going to be
a little bit of wait.
And then from Auckland, rescue helicopters
also headed out to White Island.
There were air ambulance
helicopters,
Westpac Rescue helicopters.
They're search-and-rescue experts
with all the equipment
and resources necessary,
but they were also
probably an hour out from the Island.
- Oh my God there are people there.
- Look at the boat.
When we first got back to the Bay,
we can see everything
is just covered in this gray ash.
Your brain just can't process
what you're seeing.
One thing that caught
my attention was this helicopter.
Oh shit. Look
at that helicopter. Look.
- Totally spazzed out.
- Yeah.
And I can very clearly see
that it is now been pushed backwards.
It's now half off the deck
and the rotors are bent.
That was the first time that I, uh,
really started to think about
the forces of what had
actually happened during that eruption.
I remembered that I
took three or four photographs
a few minutes after we'd left the jetty.
If you look real closely,
you can see just these little dots
of people right up on the crater.
My group was still
near to the crater.
We were all
approximately 100 to 150 meters
away from the point of the eruption.
To my left, I could see my parents.
Uh...
um, my father was sitting up,
struggling with his gas mask.
I couldn't see my sister at the time.
I could see my mother
um...
just lying there. Not really, not
really moving.
Or communicating, in any way.
There were so many people...
The Island is continuing to
blow out steam from the Crater Lake.
And we can see people at the jetty.
I see at least 16.
Oh God,
they're just covered in ash.
Oh my God. Oh dear babe.
As soon as we'd seen
how bad the eruption was,
it kind of changed our purpose.
This is now about needing to help people.
At that point,
I had to make a decision,
"Do I swim for the boat
and make sure I'm safe,
or do I go back and try and help?
This is a time where you're tested
and do the best you can.
I swam back over to the pier and started
helping people into rubber boats.
Everybody is in a frantic
race to get onto that Zodiac boat.
We didn't know if that was
a pre-eruption before the main event.
So it was just pandemonium on that jetty.
We needed to get off this Island.
I might jump.
- Just wait!
- Wait! Wait!
Wait!
We tried to get onto the first boat
which actually stopped at the
jetty, but people pushed ahead of us,
we couldn't get on it. So then, on the
next one, I grabbed the ladder, get on,
then I kind of just flopped into the boat.
Okay.
Don't touch me, oh.
- Don't touch me.
- Oh God.
At that stage
it was quite a bit of chaos,
you know, so people are trying to jump in,
and you kind of had to hold them back.
Pushed them back a bit.
I remember grabbing their hands,
helping them into the boat,
and their skin would
just come off in your hands, you know.
So this is really like uh... a kind
of war movie situation, you know?
Oh my God.
Come and...
- Help!
- Help!
The inflatable
came back to the Phoenix,
and one of the guides got out
three or four first aid kits,
and I can see that she's distressed
and I was quite close
to her and I said to her,
"Both my daughter
and I were first-aid trained.
Can we help?" Her response was,
"We need all the help we can get."
So I picked up that first aid kit,
walked to the back of the boat.
Those first survivors...
...were coming onto the boat.
And we set up a a triage,
uh, we're sitting them down.
We're just trying to alleviate
the pain of a burn with cool water.
They were just screaming, "Get me
out of here. Get me away from here."
The boats are here,
the boats are here now!
- Oh my God.
- The motor's going.
They were burned from 45%
to 80% or even like full, fully burnt.
So survival rates after 45%,
they go down significantly as well.
So you know
you're dealing with people who...
who are going to die within the next hour
or so making their way back to shore.
It was a, quite a dire situation.
And at that stage,
the boat was at full capacity.
You know, so we had
to get back to shore as fast as we could.
I got a call from my wife,
and she said, "There's a massive amount
of smoke coming off Whakaari.
Is your brother all right?"
And I said, "Well, I think so."
I said, "I haven't heard anything.
But I believe, hey,
Hayden would let us know."
And I looked through
the gap out to the ocean there.
And man, she was... there was...
a big plume of smoke had come up.
I was driving along the coast,
and that's when I noticed
a really, really big plume,
bigger than normal
and definitely darker than normal.
I was looking at it, looking at going,
"That's... something happening."
Volcanic Air had a message
that there'd been an eruption.
I had actually been able
to view on one of the volcano cameras,
located at the coast at Whakatne.
I think it became pretty apparent that,
you know, sitting back
and doing nothing wasn't an option.
We knew that
there were people on the Island.
We had the means
and the ability to try and help
and it's just the right thing
to do, and that's what we did.
Like all things, you know,
when it comes down
to making decisions and things happening,
you either do or you don't. So I do.
I called Tim and I said, "I'm going."
And he said,
"Yeah, I'll see you up there."
I called two really experienced
people that worked for me.
I said "Go and get
a machine out ready to go, fuel it up.
Grab some gear that
you think we might need,
grab some extra masks and some water."
And then they took off.
A few moments later, I lifted.
You could hear all the
chit-chat going on on the radio
and that's when
I heard John Funnell's voice.
I was actually
doing some flying
at Whakatne in my airplane,
just testing out some new equipment.
That's when I heard Mark Law
on the radio, calling for a fixed-wing.
We needed someone circling
overhead who was like a relay station
or a means of passing communication,
because there is very limited cell phone
coverage on White Island.
There's no fixed radio
or any radio system there.
I volunteered my help.
I had plenty of fuel,
I had the ability to get out there.
And uh, never gave it
a thought about not going.
All the victims were
kind of laid around the boat,
uh, at the front, at the back.
We all kind of fell
into our own roles, assisting people.
I think every one of us
on that boat did help quite a bit.
So we're dealing
with exposed hands,
legs, faces,
but the burns were far worse than that.
I remember that being
a key moment where I thought
"What would burn you through an
item of clothing,
but didn't burn the clothing?"
I realized actually that the steam caused
injuries far worse, that we couldn't see.
There wasn't room
for us in the cabin.
We actually ended up riding
on the bow of the ship,
getting splashed by salt water
in the cold air and the sun.
It was a horrific ride back.
I just keep looking up
at the horizon thinking,
"How are we not there
yet? Surely it's been hours."
But yeah, I mean you could hear
the boat at just total capacity,
and so yeah it was like,
"Keep going boat. Keep going Phoenix."
The Phoenix had about 26 injured
or critically injured people on board.
That's when I thought,
"Shit, there's a whole boatload of people
that are still to be accounted for."
I've neared the acid lake.
I was just sitting
there rocking... rocking in pain.
Everything, my whole body was
just tingling. I had, I could see my arms,
uh, covered in gray ash.
And I was thinking, "I'm gonna die here.
I'm gonna die. That's going to be it."
I was sat in the middle
of about half a dozen or more people.
People who were dead or dying.
In that time, you could hear
the voices slowly start to dissipate.
The screaming becoming less frequent.
The crying becoming more quiet.
I knew you've got
your highest likelihood of surviving
any kind of trauma if you've received
medical assistance within the first hour.
After sitting there for half an hour,
I came to the realization
that no one was coming.
And then something just clicked.
Just get up and go and go find some help.
Standing up and walking
away from my parents,
that was... I would say,
the toughest thing I've ever had to do.
But once I did find that
strength, it was less so a walk,
but more of a stumble. A forceful
pushing myself just to keep on walking.
Fifteen to twenty minutes
into the trip back,
that's where people started
kind of screaming out,
just saying "I need water! I need water!"
We just did what we could
with Matt and Lauren.
And these guys at the front.
What was in my first aid kit
was of far less value than the container.
I tipped everything out of my first aid
kit and started to fill it with water.
We just start to pour cold water
just over their hands,
over what we can see that is exposed.
Everybody was screaming
for relief in a certain way.
I think we were all just doing
what we could at that time.
I was told a few times,
you know, "You need to sit down.
You probably inhaled
a lot of ash and stuff."
But um... it's very hard
to sit down in a situation like that,
you know. So you just keep going.
They wrapped me in
a blanket to keep me warm,
and then Geoff Hopkins even, you know,
kept his body to keep me warm.
She tells me,
"I'm... I'm not going to make it.
I'm not going to make it."
"Yes, you are. This isn't
the end of your life.
You have got many years ahead of you."
She asked if I would just hold her hand,
and I couldn't, hold it, because
it was just so badly burnt.
I'm not normally a religious
person, but I remember praying to God,
that He would just end my life,
just so I wasn't in pain anymore.
And that's where I lost consciousness.
It was very difficult
for me to breathe.
My legs felt heavy.
There was a lot of effort every
single step uh, to keep going forward.
I recall Hayden previously
telling us in the safety brief to try
to follow the stream back to the beach.
I rounded a bend where
I had to cross the stream.
It was very hot, it was burning,
and I had to jump across it.
And all I wanted to do
was just to sit down again.
But I knew if I take a break and sit down,
I'm not going to get back up again.
As I got
to the Island, you could see
it was still ashing quite significantly.
Quite a column of ash and steam.
So I thought, "Well okay.
I'll have a look around."
So I flew into the crater.
I remember looking down and
going, "Gosh, that looks like a person.
That looks like more.
No, it looks like a guy sitting."
And then I thought,
"Hang on, there's a lot more."
I was trying to fly
with both radios and the cell phone.
I was keeping upwind
of the ash cloud, and to one side,
just going backwards and forwards.
I knew that we had
to get information out to the authorities
as to how bad the situation was
so they could plan
and put more resources in if needed.
I said to Mark,
"We need to know the number of dead
and the number of injured."
I tried to land
in a couple places too dusty,
and so I found one of my wood helipads,
and zeroed in onto that,
and just flew straight into it,
into sort of like a brown-out.
I left the aircraft running.
Grabbed my mask and jumped out.
I then picked up some
footprints down the creek.
And I was focused on planning
my approach into the Island,
you know, it was really dusty.
So, we had to be
pretty committed to our landing.
I initially forgot my mask and
I didn't get very far from the helicopter
before I realized
it was hard breathing out there.
It was really hard.
You had to have a mask on.
Saw one person, then I saw another.
Saw a bunch just sort of further up.
Conscious, just, but barely conscious.
Some people crying out louder than others.
I could form a picture
of what was happening down there.
We just kept finding more and more
people all the time that needed help,
and it was just... it became
very obvious very quickly to me,
it was a major calamity
we had on our hands.
I called the guys in.
I gave them a brief. I said,
"Look, there's a lot of people here.
Quite a few of them are dead.
There's a lot alive and
we're going to go to all of them."
We were passing the
information to air traffic control.
So that they would direct the two Westpac
Rescue helicopters into White Island.
I said, "We've got people
in extreme pain here
and we've got no medical equipment.
We've got no helicopters with stretchers.
We need you guys here on the Island."
They responded straight away.
"We'll come direct."
So I called Mark up
and said "Help's on its way.
It... it will get better soon."
So at that time,
we just started working through
all the folks on the ground,
really just clearing their airways,
clearing their noses,
putting some people in recovery positions,
putting gas masks back on people,
and dabbing water where we could.
And just continuing
until we got further assistance.
The ash was still falling on us.
And then every now and again we'd hear
big, you know, booms
as stuff was going on in the plume.
Anyway, cracked on.
The Whakatne Coast Guard
boat met the Phoenix just about halfway
back to Whakatne, pulled up alongside.
The skipper advised that they
had multiple critical people on board.
So it was elected
to put the ambulance crew
on board the Phoenix to assist
with their care for their return trip.
Paramedics jump on and
then suddenly we were away again.
My expectation was,
"Ah, the paramedics will take over."
But the reality was
even though they had a big kit,
there wasn't anything
in that kit that was going to help.
And really the paramedic just said,
"Just keep doing what you're doing.
Just keep reassuring.
There's nothing else we can do."
People had started gathering
down on the waterfront there,
along the river mouth.
I could see lots of ambulances, police.
Um... it felt like every person
who was a frontline
emergency staff member was there.
Once we knew
boats were on the way back,
that's when I'd go
and clear the wharf for them
because I knew they'd be heading
through the first wharf and unloading.
We were just
around trying to establish
where we would set up the triaging
for the people coming off the boats.
I had a little bit of denial,
a little bit of disbelief.
I thought, "You know what, I probably
should just give Hayden a quick call."
And I tried ringing him
and I got no reply.
I guess being a small community,
your network of connections
spreads a little bit wider.
And so my wife rang our family friend.
And asked if everything was all right,
and she said, "It's not good."
I picked the kids up and raced into town.
We drove down to Whakatne,
straight to White Island Tours.
We just saw the ambulances
and um... police everywhere.
They had the whole family around, um... we
were all, you know, just waiting for news.
I made it to a rocky outcrop,
and you could see the view
of the water, and I was like,
"I made it," and then
directly in front of me
was one of the crew
members from the Phoenix.
He had the radio to his mouth...
...saying something like "That's
it, it's... might be time to wrap up."
As soon as I heard that I just yelled
with whatever energy that I had left.
It was more like a scream.
And then he turned around
with a wide-eyed expression,
like the shock on his face
saying like, "Holy, holy crap."
And he straight away just said,
"I have a survivor.
Um... let's go."
And then when I flung
my arms around his shoulders,
I just remember saying "Uh, my family."
All I wanted to do the whole time was
just get him to allow me to take him back
to where everyone else was.
He was like, "It'll be okay. We're going
to get you back to the ship now."
So we boarded the Te Puia
and then departed.
I'd lost track of all time
because I was just so busy
trying to communicate
with air traffic control.
"We urgently need help out here.
We just keep finding more survivors
and needing more help."
They called back, probably
five minutes later,
and said "We've been directed by the
Communication Center
that we're not to go to the Island."
The decision
was made at a higher level,
that there'd been
a no-fly zone put in place.
And this was due to the dangerous
environment there around the Island.
Quite toxic, quite acidic, and
quite dangerous for any rescuers.
And there was
a high risk of another explosion.
At this stage, it is too dangerous
for police and rescue services
to go to the Island.
The Island is currently covered
in ash and volcanic material.
We are taking expert advice with
regards to safety of any rescue attempt.
I called Mark's team
back on the ground again, and said,
"You just have to do
what you can with what you've got.
You're on your own."
He goes,
"No, they're not coming."
So I said, "Oh yeah? Uh, okay."
Then we essentially
just moved into Plan B,
and that was,
"We're going to do it ourselves."
Mark and his team were
facing a horrendous situation
with multiple patients
with severe scalding burns.
This is the stuff
that nightmares are made out of.
At that stage,
we got everyone together
and it became a combined
effort to identify the survivors,
and start to get them
onboard the aircraft.
It was just, "Let's get everyone
who's still living off this island."
Once we started to move people,
we realized how severe the injuries were.
Whole legs were just, you know, just
blistered and trying to pick people up,
and skin was coming off in our hands,
and all over
our clothing and things like that.
But you can't, you can't sit there
and dwell about it.
You eventually
just got to get on and talk to people,
tell them what you're going to do.
"Okay, right,
you're going in the helicopter.
We're gonna lift you up here.
You'll be 20 minutes away to a hospital."
You know, when people
are down and out and nearly gone,
words are tremendously powerful.
And we didn't have time
to pull up our seats.
We had to, you know,
lift people up right up high.
We used some seat belts, just to hold
people up more than hold them in.
We finally got five people into the
first helicopter, and then he left.
So, we loaded my one up
and then I lifted off.
I had one on board the aircraft,
and then we got one more on board.
We couldn't get any more
in the back of my aircraft.
So then I got airborne with those two.
I just remember thinking that I
wish this helicopter would fly faster,
and really my only thoughts
flying back were
with the people
in the back of my aircraft.
You know, we gave them water
to try and uh, assist.
And to, you know... but yeah.
That was a horrendous,
huge effort on their part.
There was little more
they could have done.
There were no more survivors left.
The only people left on the
island were the deceased.
As we approach land,
Mike the skipper said,
"Hold on because we're just
going to go through this at full speed."
That boat did not stop
when it went over that bar.
It just carried
at that speed up the river,
which we had never seen before.
I remember thinking that, "You know, this
boat is coming at speed for a reason."
There was a line
of paramedics, a line of police,
a line of fire fighters,
and they were just looking wide-eyed
trying to take in what they could see.
I guess almost with shock.
That's when we got
our first visual on the casualties.
I mean, I'd never seen... a human body
um, in an eruption,
so I wasn't, you know, exactly sure...
what it would look like.
I remember
a police officer I'd seen coming in,
with his hands full of Glad Wrap.
They're trying to get
all the stuff that they could
from the local stores
to cover the burn wounds.
I heard Geoff yell
to the paramedics,
"Get her off first.
She's in critical condition."
Matt walked off the boat
which just amazed me.
I was very clear that
I did not want to be separated from her,
so they actually let me ride in the
ambulance with her to the hospital.
Where I was,
the three people I had, um...
There was this moment
when, um, one of them, um, just slumped,
slumped on me.
And um...
and I just think at that point in time,
I just had my own little moment.
Um, I remember standing up,
taking a breath,
turning around, and facing
the other side of the river,
and then turning back
and just having total clarity
of what we needed to do.
There was fire
and ambulance, and police.
And somehow in that whole crowd,
I managed to spot my mom and sister,
and I remember thinking,
"They can't see me like this."
So I got up and I couldn't
actually straighten out my limbs.
And so I kind of had to walk
a bit odd to the side of the boat...
Beelined it straight for the ambulance,
'cause I didn't want them
to see me in that much pain.
The first casualties
from a volcanic eruption
being stretchered from
White Island clearly suffering burns.
Of course, there's still
a number unaccounted for.
Twenty of them
we believe are seriously injured.
I race into town.
Um...
My mom and dad were there.
One of the skippers said,
"Hayden didn't come off.
He isn't... hasn't come off."
But he wasn't 100 percent
sure where he was.
And we said...
"But no, it's... it can't be. How?"
He said he didn't know whether he's
on a helicopter or not. He wasn't sure.
We had it tapped out, you know,
it was going as fast as we could,
probably 120 knots.
There were some instructions
coming from the Rescue Services,
that we were to fly to the airport
with all the patients,
but I said "No, we're not doing that.
We're going to go to hospital."
It's just straight out of time,
wasted time.
I felt that Rescue Services,
you know, they'd already let us down.
So you know, the hospital wasn't going
to let us down because we'd just arrive.
They were going to go into that hospital
and you had lots of people
that could take care of them quickly.
I had the thought,
"My mom's going to wonder what happened
to us when we just
stop communicating with her at all."
And I still had my cell phone with me.
So, I asked one of the people nearby
to call my mom. I couldn't work it
because it was a fingerprint unlock
and I didn't have any fingerprints left.
Hi Mom, it's me.
I just wanted to let you know,
and this isn't a joke,
the volcano actually erupted
while we were on the Island,
so we're at a hospital in New Zealand.
I don't know how long I'll be here,
but I'll try and
keep you updated as best I can.
At that point, we got separated.
I didn't really understand
how bad of shape I was in.
I certainly didn't expect
I was going to be in a coma in...
in New Zealand for over a month or more.
They cut off my wedding ring
and I remember begging them
not to do that
because I had just gotten married.
I was just heartbroken and...
and I wouldn't look when they cut it off.
You go from a situation where
there's urgency to suddenly
when the urgency stops.
And it's not until that moment then,
when suddenly what we were
doing now had been passed
to a professional,
did we start to process
what had just happened.
I called my wife.
As soon as she answered, I couldn't talk.
You know the tears just started
to come out of nowhere.
Everybody was very,
you know, emotionally
and physically wrecked at that stage.
Jolene, my girlfriend, came over
to pick me up, and I was able to,
you know, hug her and...
that's, I think, when emotionally
everything hit me for the first time.
We heard from the police
there were eight still on the Island
on Whakaari, passed away.
Tipene was one of them.
I dropped on the floor.
I couldn't believe, I couldn't believe
that I was hearing, you know...
Parekura we call it. Tragedy.
Once we got the word
that the last helicopter landed,
you know, I actually rang Mark Law
for an update of what was happening.
I just... I just,
you know, I felt as friends,
you know, like uh... we
just have to let them know,
you know, as soon as possible.
You know, "I was there with Hayden
and he definitely passed away."
He had seen Hayden, and um...
He'd seen him on the Island,
and said that he hadn't made it.
Mark talked
about seeing footsteps in the ash.
And they believe that it was Hayden
and Tipene that had moved about
and helped the final few, I guess,
be comfortable in their last moments.
I know both Tipene and Hayden
put everybody first, before themselves.
But he wasn't coming home.
It is now clear that there
were two groups on the Island,
those who were able to be evacuated
and those who were close to the eruption.
To those who have lost
or are missing family and friends,
we share in your unfathomable grief
at this moment in time and in your sorrow.
Your loved one stood alongside Kiwis
who were hosting you here and we grieve
with you and we grieve with them.
The official death toll
from that volcanic eruption
in New Zealand now stands at eight.
Nine of them
have now been confirmed dead...
the latest, teenage brothers...
Death toll from Monday's
disaster has now risen to at least 15.
Sixteen people died...
He was
a dedicated public servant...
Among the 21 victims
were her husband, Gavin,
and 15-year old daughter, Zoe.
I didn't really know
what had happened for three weeks.
No one had told me still,
but a friend of mine came to
visit me on the Burns Unit,
and I'm like "Oh, how's Hayden?
Like I'm surprised I haven't seen Hayden."
And she just like looked at my family and
yeah, they all burst into tears.
And yeah, that's how I found out.
I woke up on the 17th of December.
My grandfather was the one
that... broke the terrible news to me.
My father was rushed by Mark Law
straight to the hospital,
where unfortunately he,
uh, succumbed to his injuries.
Uh, my mother did pass away on the Island,
and she was uh...
recovered by the
New Zealand Army a few days later.
And they're not sure where my sister was
or what had happened to her body.
When the ancestor,
Ttahi, did die,
it is said in our folklore,
that his spirit,
it had transformed as one
of the guardians of the ocean today.
The dead themselves, they too have
become similar to the ancestor Ttahi.
Whakaari has given
her sanction, her consent,
to have them there as guardians,
kaitiaki, forevermore.
They take their place in time
where they will never be forgotten.
Some days are good,
some days aren't,
if you want me to be 100% honest with you.
I know people are looking at me;
I know people are looking at my hands.
Um... I don't like it.
I always feel like
I have to explain ahead of time
what these are from.
I have days where it's easier than others.
All right.
So brussels sprouts on one side,
apples and sweet potatoes on the other.
My husband and I are training
to run in a half marathon,
so some days
when I'm focused on things like running,
it's good, and yes, I can see my future.
I can see happy days,
and I can look past the volcano.
But, um...
Yeah, some days are really hard.
Yeah.
My ring finger
doesn't really work all that well,
and that really messes
with me on my dominant hand.
At this point, we're still getting
a surgery a month.
The timeline with this recovery
is just so, so, so long.
The eruptions was two minutes,
but the consequences are multiple years.
I understand nobody controls nature,
but you have to at least give me
a chance to make an informed decision.
Had I known what I know now,
there's zero percent chance we would have
ever set foot on the island. Zero.
Yes, so I was burnt
from my boot line
to my shorts line and the back of my legs,
back to my knees was actually spared
because being crouched down,
it actually protected the backs of
my knees which was good.
I knew what could happen out there.
But you don't believe
it will happen to you.
This hasn't changed my opinion
on how I will interact with nature.
I mean, I won't live in a padded room
because what kind of life is that?
I guess I know that
I can get through anything now,
so I mean that's worth something.
Maybe not to anyone else but to me,
it's worth something.
Throughout my
whole stay in hospital,
I made it a really strict point
to take progress photos every other day,
so I can look back at them
and see how far I've come.
I've had 17 surgeries.
I was told that
I would be spending a year in hospital.
But I'm pretty proud to say
that my total stay was
just under two months.
I'm a stubborn bastard.
I refuse to give up.
I'll just keep on trying and trying.
Uh, and I refuse to quit,
no matter how hard it gets.
I still love a risk.
But calculated risk I think
is the word that needs to be said.
They shouldn't have been there.
Should never go there.
I can see Whakaari from my home.
I see it from every room in my home. Yeah.
The less I see of it the better,
to tell you the truth.
So you just shut the curtain, let it be.
Say a little prayer.
Then you do the same thing the next day.
And the next day and...
yeah.
I think, you know, in some ways
we understood the Island,
that it's an unknown outcome.
Mother Nature does what she wants to do.
But there's also human nature.
And in the face of adversity,
it's human nature to go and help.
Ordinary people willing
to give their own lives to help others.
That's what makes people...
the good people in the world who they are.
A lot of positive has come
from such a horrific event.
The Community Support
has been quite overwhelming.
I have friendships
that I wouldn't trade for the world.
You have to take something positive
because otherwise
that cloud will just follow you forever.
My gym, and my work colleagues,
my friends, my family,
are who all push me to keep on going.
They've given me the drive
to keep working hard.
Especially my grandfather, my rock.
He's been with me from the very beginning.
And I would never have been able to make
it this far without his love and support.
[Matt I have a perfect
unburnt spot on my wrist.
That is the exact outline
of where her hand was.
It was like this.
Yep, that's why this hand is much better
than this hand.
Like I can't even make
a fist in this hand, and this hand,
I can make a fist fully.
I will always be by his side. Always.
I just love him so much and
this has made us even closer, I feel like.
I try to get out there every
couple of months and go and say, "Hi."
And Hayden's favorite drink
was a Steinlager beer,
you know, a good Kiwi beer.
And we take a dozen out with us and
we sit out there and whoever's with us,
we have a couple of drinks and we
always pour one in the ocean, you know?
As much as I hate wasting one,
we always pour one in
and give him a drink.
So you do, you look for little moments
and you look for signs,
I guess to find
your ways of moving forward.
In the face of Mother Nature,
and all that she can throw at us,
we've still got to remember that
as humans, we'll always have each other.
The works Thy Hand hath made
I see the stars
I hear the mighty
Thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed
Then sings my soul
My Savior God, to Thee
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul
My Savior God, to Thee
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul
My Savior God, to Thee
How great!
- How great!
- How great!
- How great Thou
- Art!
Subtitle translation by: Ayolope Koiki
You could feel the heat from the volcano.
You could feel that the ground was warm.
You kind of get
these beautiful yellow colors.
Dark, dark oranges as well.
I mean, just colors everywhere.
Steam popping up out of the ground...
It was an absolutely breathtaking sight.
It looked like Mars or something.
There was a lot more steam
than I thought there would be.
You knew there was something
beautiful and terrible,
and you wanted to see it...
but our tour guides just said,
"Do not go near the edge of the crater."
I was getting really anxious.
And I talked to our tour guide,
and I asked him,
"What do we do if there is an eruption,
because I'm getting
a little nervous here?"
I love my wife more than anything
but being anxious is not
an unusual situation for her
so I did just brush it off
for the most part.
They even said the words,
"It's not going to erupt."
As a young Kiwi,
what better place to grow up?
You got the hills,
and the hunting and the fishing.
And the ocean to swim in.
You know, it... it... there's nothing better.
Whakatne is a beautiful
community, full of adventure.
Geographically, we are
on the east coast of the North Island.
Auckland's here.
And then down the coast is Whakatne.
People would pronounce it
"Wock-a-tain" or "Feck-a-tah-nee" or
"Wock-a-tah-nee" or whatever.
But it's a small community
that has a lot of love at the heart of it.
There's 38,000 people in Whakatne.
We have uh,
51 percent non-Mori, you know,
and 48 percent Mori.
And our
communities support one another.
And together,
we have got a beautiful area,
which includes
the living active, breathing volcano,
Whakaari.
The English name, "White Island."
White Island is about 48
kilometers off the coast of Whakatne.
When you're driving down the coast,
you look out across
the horizon and you see the large
plumes of white smoke
coming out of the crater.
Absolutely amazing. It's just
the raw beauty of nature.
In our folklore,
we come from the mountains.
We actually are descendants of Whakaari.
And we are the protectors
of the Island itself.
She is an awesome energy
and power unto her own right.
But she's also very special
in terms of tourism.
People love White Island.
And so many people
are connected to White Island Tours here.
Our restaurants,
our motels,
everything... our shops, our boutiques...
All of those rely on people that
adventure tourism brought to our town.
Our wedding was
the most perfect magical day ever.
I don't think I ever smiled
that much in my entire life.
I'm an adventure seeker.
She is absolutely not an adventure seeker.
I'm more of a laying-out type of girl,
or um... just, relaxing
at a beach, or something like that.
So for our honeymoon,
we started looking at cruises.
We found this one
for New Zealand and we looked at it.
It was like, "Oh this is great!
New Zealand has all this amazing geography
and attractions. This seems perfect."
My sister and I,
we really like anything
that's gonna give us a lot of adrenaline,
and I suppose,
put us at some kind of enjoyable risk.
Oh, fuck!
Woo!
So we jumped off the Auckland Tower.
We went black water rafting.
My mom and dad
had previously been on a few cruises,
and they really enjoyed them.
And they brought it to us,
my sister and I, the idea
of going on a cruise to New Zealand.
And on that cruise, we were given the
options of excursions onto the mainland.
I would pick out
an excursion one day,
and Matt would pick out
an excursion for a different day.
So December 9th was actually
Matt's day to pick out an excursion.
I'm into everything science.
And it sounded really interesting,
like an actual volcano
that you can walk up to and look into.
White Island
was something different
that you wouldn't normally be able to do,
being one of
the world's most active volcanoes.
I mean, from the
description, it was a nice easy hike.
It's not like you need rock climbing gear
and everything else to get up there.
It was, just walk up to the crater
and look in and see this amazing volcano.
They made it sound exciting,
they didn't make it sound dangerous.
And I was like,
"Okay, that... it looks good."
You know, we looked at
the description, and I was like, "Okay."
We live in Hamilton in New Zealand,
and I'm a full-time pastor at a church.
My daughter, she'd been studying through
school geology and volcanic activity,
and I said to her, "We should go
while we have the opportunity to go."
And then for my 50th birthday,
she'd surprised me with tickets
to go out to Whakaari.
Monday morning, it's quiet.
There's not a lot of traffic around.
We arrived at
the tour office and we read through
a couple of safety documents,
and then were asked to sign
just our contact details
and next of kin details.
I know there's a risk
and I'm there with my daughter,
I'm not going to put her in danger.
But at no point did I ever fear
what we were actually doing.
- Morning!
- Morning.
That day, there were
a few boats that toured the Island,
and we were in the Phoenix.
We left the wharf,
traveled out on
the river for five or ten minutes.
You cross the river bar
heading out into the open ocean...
And then from there on to White Island.
We departed from
the main cruise ship around 9:00a.m.
We took an hour-long
bus ride to Whakatne,
to the port where we were taking off from,
with 40 or so other tourists.
We all got onto the Te Puia,
and the tour guide said
it was a brand new ship.
I think they just gotten it that year.
There were four guides
on the Te Puia.
They were locals to Whakatne,
and they were very excited to tell us
about the history of White Island.
The morning of December 9th,
it was Hayden, Tipene,
Jake, and myself as guides.
We prepped the boat and then
we just left like every other day.
Closer to shore, we'll take you on a fully
guided tour of the inner crater area.
And this will take approximately
an hour to an hour and a half.
My younger brother,
Hayden, loved the outdoors
and he had a passion for summer.
And in 2009, he started
as a tour guide, guiding in Whakaari.
Hayden kept a detailed diary
of every trip that he went to the Island.
And he'd done 1,111 trips.
That's amazing.
I did not know that was
Hayden's 1,111th trip to the Island. No.
Hayden's probably
one of the longest standing guides.
He helped train me
at work, and then, yeah,
after work we'd go
to the local fishing club,
or we'd take trips
up to the Tarawera Falls.
He was always up for an adventure.
He developed a huge passion
for the whole environment.
Not just Whakaari,
and not just the volcano.
The gusts were blowing,
the swell was quite large.
A lot of the poor passengers actually were
being moved to the back of Te Puia
cause they were feeling quite seasick.
I was sitting
with my family, we were kind of...
not making fun of them
but laughing a little bit,
smirking to ourselves.
We quite enjoyed being on the water.
And we were enjoying the bumpy ride.
We had no idea
how rough the seas were going to be.
We were on that boat
for probably 90 minutes.
And I would say, at least seven or eight
people were vomiting just 'cause
the entire ship would pitch up
and then it would pitch back down,
and you would see ocean then sky,
then ocean then sky, then ocean then sky.
I was so close to throwing up.
I mean, I was literally
like, holding my stomach like this.
It's an hour and a half
out there and an hour and a half back.
Some days, you can go
out there and it can be rough.
It can be horrible. And if you're
not used to being on a boat for an hour,
your sea legs go pretty quickly.
Hence, there was another option as well.
You could take a helicopter
and that was only a 20-minute flight.
Waking up that day
for me was a little bit of nerves,
a little bit of stress.
This is my first day where
I was allowed to fly passengers solo.
I went to to New Zealand
initially for my license.
Just looking for
a good place to learn to fly.
On a clear day,
if you're taking off from the mainland,
you'd be able to see White Island.
You can fly in a straight line for it.
And the conditions that day, they were
just... they were perfect conditions.
As the Phoenix got
real close to the Island,
the crew are starting
to prepare us for getting off.
And my daughter said, "Let's go Dad.
I want to be first on the Island."
The tour started and uh...
we just slowly walked.
The two tour guides,
one of them would go first
and one of them would go last, and
as a group we would stay between them.
It's kind of like
a scene out of Jurassic Park
when you approach it.
Landing on White Island, first time for me
was like landing on the moon kind of,
because it's such
a surreal kind of environment.
So after we landed,
I gave them the safety briefing.
And I start walking towards the crater.
Most of
the volcano is underwater.
So you're only seeing the top of it.
White Island is a stratovolcano.
When it erupts, it doesn't tend to have
lava flows like the Hawaiian volcanoes.
It tends to put down layers of rocks
and ash, and build itself up that way.
When the Te Puia
arrived at the Island,
we had to get in these small...
they call them "zodiac boats."
They're just inflatable rubber boats.
There's just a really
quick trip to the Island.
Yeah, about a minute or two.
Then they arrived
at this very rickety cement jetty
with a rusted metal ladder on it.
You had the sounds
of the waves crashing onto the beach,
washing up onto the shore which gave
that sea breeze that smell of the salt.
And then you also have
this almost like a...
a strong malodorous smell of sulfur.
It looked quite barren. No signs of life.
When we walked off that
jetty and got our first real glimpse...
I had a picture in my head
of what a volcano would look like and
this was not it.
No lava. Just lots and lots of steam.
It was very beautiful,
but I felt like we were very much
in the middle of nowhere.
From there,
we created separate groups.
My guides on the Island
were Hayden and Tipene.
Tipene was, I believed to be learning.
Hayden was showing him the ropes.
Tipene was very inquisitive...
always asking questions, you know.
Proud to be a Mori.
He was excited to have that job.
He enjoyed it, going out
on the boat, mixing with people.
He loved telling them
all sorts of stories,
Mori myths and legends.
He wasn't supposed to work that day.
We were going to do some shopping.
But he was called into work to fill in
for someone and then he went to work.
These tour guides
and pilots and skippers,
they know the Island so
well, down to every last rock.
They know Whakaari more than anybody else.
Alright, everyone! Uh,
welcome to White Island.
I'll be your guide today
for our little tour around the Island.
They gave us a hard hat
that had a chin strap on it,
and then they gave us a respirator.
So what we're gonna do is
we're gonna head around the side here
up to that main crater.
Uh, stop at a few points
of interest on the way.
I'll let you know
some information about the Island.
Um, so yeah, but
as long as everyone's all good,
we'll start our tour. We'll get going.
The first group
left pretty promptly
after having a short safety brief.
We were still
collecting our group together.
So what's this for?
So you're going to suck on them
and it's going to help produce saliva.
So that any irritation
that you get from the steam itself,
it's just going to help soothe it.
So you're not coughing so much.
The Island track is about a
singular loop that you start at the beach.
Once you reach the Crater Lake,
you turn around
and make your way around the Island.
And then back
to the mouth at the entrance.
You got quite a bit of gas
on the Island that tries to escape.
It's something that has
to work its way up through a more viscous
muddy substance.
So you kind of get that bloop-bloop,
those kind of noises going on.
So what's happening is
the sulphur's coming up with the steam.
It's crystallizing,
falling back down on top of itself,
and then it forms a
chimney-like structure, like on a house.
And so we call it
the sulphur chimney area.
The landscape...
it's rock and ash and mud.
But then strewn amongst
these grays are sulphur deposits
that are the most beautiful bright yellow,
and bright white crystals
that seem to sparkle in the sunlight.
And you actually get
the feeling of the vastness
and the power
of what you're encroaching on.
This glimmer of, you know, Mother Nature
at her most beautiful,
but at her most deadly.
Our guide said that the lake
is normally a beautiful bluey-green,
and that day it was white
because perhaps overnight,
there'd been some kind of activity
that had caused ash
to fall back down on the lake.
I think it happens quite often.
And for me the guides were good
with it, so I was good with it.
So we start walking up
towards the crater.
We stopped to take
some photos every couple yards or so,
and I talked to our tour guide
and I asked him,
I said, "So when was the last eruption?"
Because I'm get... my...
I'm getting a little nervous here.
He said there was one
in 2013, one in 2016,
and I'm like, "Well it's the end of 2019
now and I'm getting really nervous."
Hayden mentioned
the Island was at a Level-Two risk.
He didn't describe
what that means at the time.
Um, but he did say it's at a higher risk
of activity, which to me was worrying.
Level One, Level Two
didn't really mean a lot.
Level One, you know, not much happening.
Level Two was heightened activity.
And then Level Three
was an eruption so, you know that...
There was a massive amount of scope
between Level One and Level Three.
We made our way
back down to where we had left off.
We got back onto the Phoenix
and were just getting ready to leave.
We began to chat
with one of the tour guides
about how
all the volcanic activity at
White Island had been either overnight
or when nobody had been there.
So, it was almost like
it was being kind to people to visit.
It was like "I'll erupt
when you're not there" sort of thing.
As we left the Island and headed back,
I then look back up towards the crater.
I can see the tour from the other boat.
It was always pretty cool
to get up to the crater
and just hear everyone gasp and say,
"Wow," and "Oh my God, this is amazing,"
and all start snapping photos.
We'd get geologists coming out to see it
and really kind of have a look at it.
And then you get the other end
of the scale, which would be like,
"I just want a photo of the crater.
I just want this for Instagram."
We got to the top of the crater,
I would say probably
around two o'clock in the afternoon.
You're just looking down into this
gaping, never-ending pit of steam.
It's an intimidating sight.
They gave us another opportunity
where we could take pictures
of us in front of the crater.
I noticed another ship,
the Phoenix, had just departed the Island,
and then we hung out
up there for a few minutes,
and then started the journey back down.
I'm thinking,
"Okay, we're on our way down.
The tour is coming to an end."
So I'm feeling a little bit better.
Because they were
from a cruise ship,
we were sort of on quite a
tight time schedule.
So we were moving pretty quick.
We're on our way back to the jetty.
The other tour
is probably 10 minutes behind us,
and so we're leaving the crater, and
Hayden is coming up towards the crater.
From the crater you kind of loop back,
then it's another 500 meters
or so to the beach.
I had four passengers
that day, two couples.
And at that stage, that's
where we passed them with the boat,
the groups that were walking
towards the crater.
I did recognize Hayden
and said hi to Hayden and...
while he made his way up
towards the crater with his tour group.
We made our journey
up to the acid lake.
We could see the bubbling in
between the clouds of steam
that were wafting up into our faces.
Hayden had told us that we could only
stay there for maybe two to three minutes,
just enough time to
have a good look and take some photos
because the chemicals
that were being released at the top
there were a lot more harmful.
Everyone was rushing
to get a photo opportunity.
It was time to move on, single file.
My sister was
right up the front with Hayden.
I was with my parents
towards the middle of the group.
About halfway down to the
jetty, there were these two water streams,
and they came
from different parts of the Island.
So the tour guides actually had us stop
and stick our fingers
in the water and actually taste it.
You could actually taste
the different mineral contents.
I had just tasted the water,
and I had my back to the crater,
and I heard one of our
other tourists say "Hey, look at that!"
And you turn around and see this little
black cloud coming out of the volcano.
It didn't look intimidating.
I actually took a picture of it.
It was just like
a chimney smoke coming up. No sound.
We all turn around to see
what almost looked like a black firework,
or like a dementor
from Harry Potter with a black long tail.
So we all whipped out
our phones, started taking photos.
Shortly following,
there was another larger bang,
followed by a massive, even larger
group of rocks, flying into the air,
and then slowly that began
to increase in intensity and size.
I knew... I knew instantly.
This is, this is bad news.
This is bad news. We need to run.
I turned around
and saw the plume.
It was already taller than White Island.
I knew immediately what was going on.
My brain had just... was in overdrive
and just trying to go as fast as
it could to try and work out what to do.
Now behind me,
I hear Kelsey just yell
"Run!" and then it was on.
- Go, go, go!
- Go, go, go!
- Annie!
- Annie!
Anybody?!
At that point, I'm frantic.
I'm living my worst nightmare.
We hear Hayden
up at the front yelling to run,
at which point panic set in,
and we all
just started running for our lives.
I had my parents right on my heels.
You could feel the shadow
of the explosion rise up behind us.
We managed to run
and take shelter behind
a very large outcropping of rocks just
before the ash cloud overtook us.
It was just a black void.
All you could hear was just the sound
of rumbling and just the roaring.
At that point, there was,
there was nothing I could do.
We were going around to the
next bay which was just around the cliff,
and that's when it erupted.
- Oh my God!
- Oh my God! Oh no.
I'm watching it
go up and it's beautiful.
The white is pure white,
the black is dark.
It kind of is just... an awesome moment.
Within seconds,
what was beautiful went eerily sinister.
This ash cloud
started rolling down over the cliff.
The crew are realizing what's happened.
The boat has started
to speed up significantly.
We're still outside. The crew are calling
everybody into the cabin.
Okay, everybody inside right now.
- Go inside, go inside!
- Go, go go!
Jesus!
We were walking towards the
coast, and one of my passengers asked me,
"Should we run?"
And I looked over my shoulder and
that's when I saw
this massive eruption going on.
I remember looking up
over my left shoulder
and seeing these projectiles
arching towards us as well.
To me, it looked
like it was going up thousands of feet
and it just wasn't ending.
I looked over at the helicopter,
which would have been about
three to four hundred meters away from me.
So I... that's not an option whatsoever.
Option Two was go for some water.
So I told them to run for the water.
Once I got to the pier,
I just went and jumped in.
I remember hitting the water and
just holding my breath as long as I could.
Everything just went black.
I just remember
rocks hitting me and pelting my hardhat.
It was the darkest thing
I've ever seen in my life,
darker than any night I've ever
experienced, just pitch black.
If you read
any literature on pyroclastic flows,
people don't walk out.
I knew the odds of getting out
of the back of it, so yeah...
we just had to take shelter
and cross our fingers, really.
I held my sunglasses and my gas mask
to my face and just didn't let go.
I hear other people yelling.
It's just horrific.
I vividly remember feeling
like my back was being burned off.
My arms and legs were burned so badly,
so quickly, I never even felt them.
I heard Matt say,
"I'm sorry, Lauren."
And that broke my heart.
I hold on to his hand
because I thought, "For sure,
we're gonna die today and I just want
our bodies to be found together."
The smell was overwhelming.
The heat alone was just unbearable.
The superheated steam
just um, burning me alive.
I did my absolute best
not to breathe at all,
to keep my mouth shut,
to keep my eyes closed.
I tried moving into the fetal position,
just let my back take brunt of the force.
You know,
underwater there's no noise.
And you're just waiting for
kinda, you know, some light to reappear.
It feels like you just don't know
when it's going to end,
because it's just no light, just nothing.
At one point, there was a bit
of light. I remember looking at it.
I thought, "Thank God for that."
I started swimming towards it
but then it disappeared again.
I tell Matt I love him.
I yell it every two seconds.
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
And all I can hear
is him screaming in pain.
I've never heard him yell like that ever.
The pain was just excruciating.
The burns went through all my clothes.
Two to three minutes
was the entire eruption event.
It was the most terrifying
two minutes of my life by far.
I thought "This is it.
This is my last day on this planet.
We're going to die on our honeymoon."
I remember
looking out of that window,
and I now can't see
the Island at all. It's gone.
Time for me felt
like it was going slower.
And I always said, "Look, if
anything ever would happen to me,
I feel like I have lived, you know,
for my age, a very good full life,
and I'm satisfied to where I got."
But at that time I realized, "Nope,
I'm not ready to let this go just yet.
I think I'm just gonna keep on eh...
trying my best
to get out of this situation alive."
The ash started to
settle on the surface of the water,
light started to reappear,
and that's when I came back up.
I looked behind me towards the Island.
You could see that all the... it was still
a fine amount of ash still in the air
kind of falling down onto the island.
First thing I did was
yell out Lauren's name.
I was in such bad shape,
I was afraid she had died.
So I just
remember being so scared.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
So eventually...
when I saw her moving,
I think she said, "I'm here, I'm here."
That was the biggest relief I've ever felt
in my life when she responded.
That was my worst nightmare
would be if I survived and she didn't.
That would be worse than anything else.
I wouldn't have been able
to live with myself.
Once the eruption ceased,
I suppose I was out of shock, I just
stood up and I walked a few meters over.
We were a small distance
away from the acid lake.
Uh, there was screaming
and shouting, um, crying.
I could see some people rolling
around on the ground, um... struggling,
in severe pain,
which was a horrible sight to see.
Just gradually... it just got
less, and then it just stopped and
it was still and it was quiet.
And so I thought,
"Well it's now or never."
So got up and started yelling
at everyone to follow me
and get up and
then started heading back to the jetty.
For me, personally,
physically, I was perfectly fine.
But everybody who was on the Island during
the eruption, none of them were okay.
Nobody managed to escape that steam.
That steam, you're talking
about 200 Celsius.
So that's... you come out looking
like a boiled chicken, pretty much,
to put in a rough way.
I just looked down at my arm and
there's just like an entire layer of skin
just flopping off.
I mean, I knew I was in bad shape
and I knew she was in bad shape.
The only thing on my mind was,
"We are getting off this Island now."
Please run. Run! Please run.
I was really struggling to walk.
I fell a couple of times.
Matt was burnt a lot worse than I was
because he was wearing a lot less clothes
than I was, but he was helping me.
I was running pure adrenaline.
I knew roughly where the jetty was
and that was where I was going.
At that point, I could see
one of the groups walking towards the pier
and they all started
collecting at the pier.
Twenty people or so waiting to be helped.
I didn't know we were going to do this,
but the skipper took the boat back
to where we'd just come from.
And as we headed back there,
we went into the shadow
of the ash cloud so it went dark.
Oh Jesus Christ.
Hey Whakatne
Coast Guard, Phoenix, do you copy?
I heard the call come through
the VHF, of the skipper that I knew,
sounding very distressed,
"There's people on the Island
and she's erupting."
And you could hear the distress
in his voice that this was serious.
Instantly, my phones just started ringing.
I then ran across the car park out to the
river where you could see White Island.
Sure, enough.
It was a big cloud above the Island
and it wasn't stopping.
Jesus.
It was only
about five minutes later
he's asking again where the help was,
so that emphasized the distress
that they must have been under.
They're calling for help
and just a couple minutes later,
they're asking, "Where is that help?"
Someone came
into our office just after 2:00p.m.,
and told us that Whakaari was erupting.
We don't have a direct line of sight
to Whakaari, but over the hills,
we could see a fairly impressive cloud.
Another staff member said,
"Oh, well. There's the cameras.
Let's go check the cameras."
And we saw what, you know,
were basically small black dots,
but we knew that those were people and
that's when
for us then it registered that
there were people on there.
We were working.
We had a deadline.
We started hearing the sirens
and we're like, "What's going on?"
I drove down
to the Mataatua reserve,
pulled up, ran up,
ran across that big grassy patch.
We knew something was wrong.
The plume was bigger than usual.
People were just staring
at Whakaari erupting, basically.
I was at home
and I saw the breaking news.
People were starting to
arrive at my house and...
geez, I was still
trying to think myself
and get it, you know?
Just wondering...
I was actually
at a Mori funeral,
and I could feel through the energy
of my speaking there
that something wasn't right.
When I went to look,
I could see the smoke coming up,
and it wasn't
a normal volcanic cloud above Whakaari,
it was very dark and dense.
When I realized it was real,
I actually just broke down and cried.
There was a bit of confusion
initially in terms of who the tourists
were that went on the Island,
and actually who had taken them there.
But we were certain
that there were people left on the Island
at the time of the eruption.
We put the call out for help
to the Whakatne Coast Guard,
and they steamed out towards White Island.
But that's an hour and a half trip by sea.
It was frustrating because we had to, um,
you know, our boats to get that far,
it's always going to be
a little bit of wait.
And then from Auckland, rescue helicopters
also headed out to White Island.
There were air ambulance
helicopters,
Westpac Rescue helicopters.
They're search-and-rescue experts
with all the equipment
and resources necessary,
but they were also
probably an hour out from the Island.
- Oh my God there are people there.
- Look at the boat.
When we first got back to the Bay,
we can see everything
is just covered in this gray ash.
Your brain just can't process
what you're seeing.
One thing that caught
my attention was this helicopter.
Oh shit. Look
at that helicopter. Look.
- Totally spazzed out.
- Yeah.
And I can very clearly see
that it is now been pushed backwards.
It's now half off the deck
and the rotors are bent.
That was the first time that I, uh,
really started to think about
the forces of what had
actually happened during that eruption.
I remembered that I
took three or four photographs
a few minutes after we'd left the jetty.
If you look real closely,
you can see just these little dots
of people right up on the crater.
My group was still
near to the crater.
We were all
approximately 100 to 150 meters
away from the point of the eruption.
To my left, I could see my parents.
Uh...
um, my father was sitting up,
struggling with his gas mask.
I couldn't see my sister at the time.
I could see my mother
um...
just lying there. Not really, not
really moving.
Or communicating, in any way.
There were so many people...
The Island is continuing to
blow out steam from the Crater Lake.
And we can see people at the jetty.
I see at least 16.
Oh God,
they're just covered in ash.
Oh my God. Oh dear babe.
As soon as we'd seen
how bad the eruption was,
it kind of changed our purpose.
This is now about needing to help people.
At that point,
I had to make a decision,
"Do I swim for the boat
and make sure I'm safe,
or do I go back and try and help?
This is a time where you're tested
and do the best you can.
I swam back over to the pier and started
helping people into rubber boats.
Everybody is in a frantic
race to get onto that Zodiac boat.
We didn't know if that was
a pre-eruption before the main event.
So it was just pandemonium on that jetty.
We needed to get off this Island.
I might jump.
- Just wait!
- Wait! Wait!
Wait!
We tried to get onto the first boat
which actually stopped at the
jetty, but people pushed ahead of us,
we couldn't get on it. So then, on the
next one, I grabbed the ladder, get on,
then I kind of just flopped into the boat.
Okay.
Don't touch me, oh.
- Don't touch me.
- Oh God.
At that stage
it was quite a bit of chaos,
you know, so people are trying to jump in,
and you kind of had to hold them back.
Pushed them back a bit.
I remember grabbing their hands,
helping them into the boat,
and their skin would
just come off in your hands, you know.
So this is really like uh... a kind
of war movie situation, you know?
Oh my God.
Come and...
- Help!
- Help!
The inflatable
came back to the Phoenix,
and one of the guides got out
three or four first aid kits,
and I can see that she's distressed
and I was quite close
to her and I said to her,
"Both my daughter
and I were first-aid trained.
Can we help?" Her response was,
"We need all the help we can get."
So I picked up that first aid kit,
walked to the back of the boat.
Those first survivors...
...were coming onto the boat.
And we set up a a triage,
uh, we're sitting them down.
We're just trying to alleviate
the pain of a burn with cool water.
They were just screaming, "Get me
out of here. Get me away from here."
The boats are here,
the boats are here now!
- Oh my God.
- The motor's going.
They were burned from 45%
to 80% or even like full, fully burnt.
So survival rates after 45%,
they go down significantly as well.
So you know
you're dealing with people who...
who are going to die within the next hour
or so making their way back to shore.
It was a, quite a dire situation.
And at that stage,
the boat was at full capacity.
You know, so we had
to get back to shore as fast as we could.
I got a call from my wife,
and she said, "There's a massive amount
of smoke coming off Whakaari.
Is your brother all right?"
And I said, "Well, I think so."
I said, "I haven't heard anything.
But I believe, hey,
Hayden would let us know."
And I looked through
the gap out to the ocean there.
And man, she was... there was...
a big plume of smoke had come up.
I was driving along the coast,
and that's when I noticed
a really, really big plume,
bigger than normal
and definitely darker than normal.
I was looking at it, looking at going,
"That's... something happening."
Volcanic Air had a message
that there'd been an eruption.
I had actually been able
to view on one of the volcano cameras,
located at the coast at Whakatne.
I think it became pretty apparent that,
you know, sitting back
and doing nothing wasn't an option.
We knew that
there were people on the Island.
We had the means
and the ability to try and help
and it's just the right thing
to do, and that's what we did.
Like all things, you know,
when it comes down
to making decisions and things happening,
you either do or you don't. So I do.
I called Tim and I said, "I'm going."
And he said,
"Yeah, I'll see you up there."
I called two really experienced
people that worked for me.
I said "Go and get
a machine out ready to go, fuel it up.
Grab some gear that
you think we might need,
grab some extra masks and some water."
And then they took off.
A few moments later, I lifted.
You could hear all the
chit-chat going on on the radio
and that's when
I heard John Funnell's voice.
I was actually
doing some flying
at Whakatne in my airplane,
just testing out some new equipment.
That's when I heard Mark Law
on the radio, calling for a fixed-wing.
We needed someone circling
overhead who was like a relay station
or a means of passing communication,
because there is very limited cell phone
coverage on White Island.
There's no fixed radio
or any radio system there.
I volunteered my help.
I had plenty of fuel,
I had the ability to get out there.
And uh, never gave it
a thought about not going.
All the victims were
kind of laid around the boat,
uh, at the front, at the back.
We all kind of fell
into our own roles, assisting people.
I think every one of us
on that boat did help quite a bit.
So we're dealing
with exposed hands,
legs, faces,
but the burns were far worse than that.
I remember that being
a key moment where I thought
"What would burn you through an
item of clothing,
but didn't burn the clothing?"
I realized actually that the steam caused
injuries far worse, that we couldn't see.
There wasn't room
for us in the cabin.
We actually ended up riding
on the bow of the ship,
getting splashed by salt water
in the cold air and the sun.
It was a horrific ride back.
I just keep looking up
at the horizon thinking,
"How are we not there
yet? Surely it's been hours."
But yeah, I mean you could hear
the boat at just total capacity,
and so yeah it was like,
"Keep going boat. Keep going Phoenix."
The Phoenix had about 26 injured
or critically injured people on board.
That's when I thought,
"Shit, there's a whole boatload of people
that are still to be accounted for."
I've neared the acid lake.
I was just sitting
there rocking... rocking in pain.
Everything, my whole body was
just tingling. I had, I could see my arms,
uh, covered in gray ash.
And I was thinking, "I'm gonna die here.
I'm gonna die. That's going to be it."
I was sat in the middle
of about half a dozen or more people.
People who were dead or dying.
In that time, you could hear
the voices slowly start to dissipate.
The screaming becoming less frequent.
The crying becoming more quiet.
I knew you've got
your highest likelihood of surviving
any kind of trauma if you've received
medical assistance within the first hour.
After sitting there for half an hour,
I came to the realization
that no one was coming.
And then something just clicked.
Just get up and go and go find some help.
Standing up and walking
away from my parents,
that was... I would say,
the toughest thing I've ever had to do.
But once I did find that
strength, it was less so a walk,
but more of a stumble. A forceful
pushing myself just to keep on walking.
Fifteen to twenty minutes
into the trip back,
that's where people started
kind of screaming out,
just saying "I need water! I need water!"
We just did what we could
with Matt and Lauren.
And these guys at the front.
What was in my first aid kit
was of far less value than the container.
I tipped everything out of my first aid
kit and started to fill it with water.
We just start to pour cold water
just over their hands,
over what we can see that is exposed.
Everybody was screaming
for relief in a certain way.
I think we were all just doing
what we could at that time.
I was told a few times,
you know, "You need to sit down.
You probably inhaled
a lot of ash and stuff."
But um... it's very hard
to sit down in a situation like that,
you know. So you just keep going.
They wrapped me in
a blanket to keep me warm,
and then Geoff Hopkins even, you know,
kept his body to keep me warm.
She tells me,
"I'm... I'm not going to make it.
I'm not going to make it."
"Yes, you are. This isn't
the end of your life.
You have got many years ahead of you."
She asked if I would just hold her hand,
and I couldn't, hold it, because
it was just so badly burnt.
I'm not normally a religious
person, but I remember praying to God,
that He would just end my life,
just so I wasn't in pain anymore.
And that's where I lost consciousness.
It was very difficult
for me to breathe.
My legs felt heavy.
There was a lot of effort every
single step uh, to keep going forward.
I recall Hayden previously
telling us in the safety brief to try
to follow the stream back to the beach.
I rounded a bend where
I had to cross the stream.
It was very hot, it was burning,
and I had to jump across it.
And all I wanted to do
was just to sit down again.
But I knew if I take a break and sit down,
I'm not going to get back up again.
As I got
to the Island, you could see
it was still ashing quite significantly.
Quite a column of ash and steam.
So I thought, "Well okay.
I'll have a look around."
So I flew into the crater.
I remember looking down and
going, "Gosh, that looks like a person.
That looks like more.
No, it looks like a guy sitting."
And then I thought,
"Hang on, there's a lot more."
I was trying to fly
with both radios and the cell phone.
I was keeping upwind
of the ash cloud, and to one side,
just going backwards and forwards.
I knew that we had
to get information out to the authorities
as to how bad the situation was
so they could plan
and put more resources in if needed.
I said to Mark,
"We need to know the number of dead
and the number of injured."
I tried to land
in a couple places too dusty,
and so I found one of my wood helipads,
and zeroed in onto that,
and just flew straight into it,
into sort of like a brown-out.
I left the aircraft running.
Grabbed my mask and jumped out.
I then picked up some
footprints down the creek.
And I was focused on planning
my approach into the Island,
you know, it was really dusty.
So, we had to be
pretty committed to our landing.
I initially forgot my mask and
I didn't get very far from the helicopter
before I realized
it was hard breathing out there.
It was really hard.
You had to have a mask on.
Saw one person, then I saw another.
Saw a bunch just sort of further up.
Conscious, just, but barely conscious.
Some people crying out louder than others.
I could form a picture
of what was happening down there.
We just kept finding more and more
people all the time that needed help,
and it was just... it became
very obvious very quickly to me,
it was a major calamity
we had on our hands.
I called the guys in.
I gave them a brief. I said,
"Look, there's a lot of people here.
Quite a few of them are dead.
There's a lot alive and
we're going to go to all of them."
We were passing the
information to air traffic control.
So that they would direct the two Westpac
Rescue helicopters into White Island.
I said, "We've got people
in extreme pain here
and we've got no medical equipment.
We've got no helicopters with stretchers.
We need you guys here on the Island."
They responded straight away.
"We'll come direct."
So I called Mark up
and said "Help's on its way.
It... it will get better soon."
So at that time,
we just started working through
all the folks on the ground,
really just clearing their airways,
clearing their noses,
putting some people in recovery positions,
putting gas masks back on people,
and dabbing water where we could.
And just continuing
until we got further assistance.
The ash was still falling on us.
And then every now and again we'd hear
big, you know, booms
as stuff was going on in the plume.
Anyway, cracked on.
The Whakatne Coast Guard
boat met the Phoenix just about halfway
back to Whakatne, pulled up alongside.
The skipper advised that they
had multiple critical people on board.
So it was elected
to put the ambulance crew
on board the Phoenix to assist
with their care for their return trip.
Paramedics jump on and
then suddenly we were away again.
My expectation was,
"Ah, the paramedics will take over."
But the reality was
even though they had a big kit,
there wasn't anything
in that kit that was going to help.
And really the paramedic just said,
"Just keep doing what you're doing.
Just keep reassuring.
There's nothing else we can do."
People had started gathering
down on the waterfront there,
along the river mouth.
I could see lots of ambulances, police.
Um... it felt like every person
who was a frontline
emergency staff member was there.
Once we knew
boats were on the way back,
that's when I'd go
and clear the wharf for them
because I knew they'd be heading
through the first wharf and unloading.
We were just
around trying to establish
where we would set up the triaging
for the people coming off the boats.
I had a little bit of denial,
a little bit of disbelief.
I thought, "You know what, I probably
should just give Hayden a quick call."
And I tried ringing him
and I got no reply.
I guess being a small community,
your network of connections
spreads a little bit wider.
And so my wife rang our family friend.
And asked if everything was all right,
and she said, "It's not good."
I picked the kids up and raced into town.
We drove down to Whakatne,
straight to White Island Tours.
We just saw the ambulances
and um... police everywhere.
They had the whole family around, um... we
were all, you know, just waiting for news.
I made it to a rocky outcrop,
and you could see the view
of the water, and I was like,
"I made it," and then
directly in front of me
was one of the crew
members from the Phoenix.
He had the radio to his mouth...
...saying something like "That's
it, it's... might be time to wrap up."
As soon as I heard that I just yelled
with whatever energy that I had left.
It was more like a scream.
And then he turned around
with a wide-eyed expression,
like the shock on his face
saying like, "Holy, holy crap."
And he straight away just said,
"I have a survivor.
Um... let's go."
And then when I flung
my arms around his shoulders,
I just remember saying "Uh, my family."
All I wanted to do the whole time was
just get him to allow me to take him back
to where everyone else was.
He was like, "It'll be okay. We're going
to get you back to the ship now."
So we boarded the Te Puia
and then departed.
I'd lost track of all time
because I was just so busy
trying to communicate
with air traffic control.
"We urgently need help out here.
We just keep finding more survivors
and needing more help."
They called back, probably
five minutes later,
and said "We've been directed by the
Communication Center
that we're not to go to the Island."
The decision
was made at a higher level,
that there'd been
a no-fly zone put in place.
And this was due to the dangerous
environment there around the Island.
Quite toxic, quite acidic, and
quite dangerous for any rescuers.
And there was
a high risk of another explosion.
At this stage, it is too dangerous
for police and rescue services
to go to the Island.
The Island is currently covered
in ash and volcanic material.
We are taking expert advice with
regards to safety of any rescue attempt.
I called Mark's team
back on the ground again, and said,
"You just have to do
what you can with what you've got.
You're on your own."
He goes,
"No, they're not coming."
So I said, "Oh yeah? Uh, okay."
Then we essentially
just moved into Plan B,
and that was,
"We're going to do it ourselves."
Mark and his team were
facing a horrendous situation
with multiple patients
with severe scalding burns.
This is the stuff
that nightmares are made out of.
At that stage,
we got everyone together
and it became a combined
effort to identify the survivors,
and start to get them
onboard the aircraft.
It was just, "Let's get everyone
who's still living off this island."
Once we started to move people,
we realized how severe the injuries were.
Whole legs were just, you know, just
blistered and trying to pick people up,
and skin was coming off in our hands,
and all over
our clothing and things like that.
But you can't, you can't sit there
and dwell about it.
You eventually
just got to get on and talk to people,
tell them what you're going to do.
"Okay, right,
you're going in the helicopter.
We're gonna lift you up here.
You'll be 20 minutes away to a hospital."
You know, when people
are down and out and nearly gone,
words are tremendously powerful.
And we didn't have time
to pull up our seats.
We had to, you know,
lift people up right up high.
We used some seat belts, just to hold
people up more than hold them in.
We finally got five people into the
first helicopter, and then he left.
So, we loaded my one up
and then I lifted off.
I had one on board the aircraft,
and then we got one more on board.
We couldn't get any more
in the back of my aircraft.
So then I got airborne with those two.
I just remember thinking that I
wish this helicopter would fly faster,
and really my only thoughts
flying back were
with the people
in the back of my aircraft.
You know, we gave them water
to try and uh, assist.
And to, you know... but yeah.
That was a horrendous,
huge effort on their part.
There was little more
they could have done.
There were no more survivors left.
The only people left on the
island were the deceased.
As we approach land,
Mike the skipper said,
"Hold on because we're just
going to go through this at full speed."
That boat did not stop
when it went over that bar.
It just carried
at that speed up the river,
which we had never seen before.
I remember thinking that, "You know, this
boat is coming at speed for a reason."
There was a line
of paramedics, a line of police,
a line of fire fighters,
and they were just looking wide-eyed
trying to take in what they could see.
I guess almost with shock.
That's when we got
our first visual on the casualties.
I mean, I'd never seen... a human body
um, in an eruption,
so I wasn't, you know, exactly sure...
what it would look like.
I remember
a police officer I'd seen coming in,
with his hands full of Glad Wrap.
They're trying to get
all the stuff that they could
from the local stores
to cover the burn wounds.
I heard Geoff yell
to the paramedics,
"Get her off first.
She's in critical condition."
Matt walked off the boat
which just amazed me.
I was very clear that
I did not want to be separated from her,
so they actually let me ride in the
ambulance with her to the hospital.
Where I was,
the three people I had, um...
There was this moment
when, um, one of them, um, just slumped,
slumped on me.
And um...
and I just think at that point in time,
I just had my own little moment.
Um, I remember standing up,
taking a breath,
turning around, and facing
the other side of the river,
and then turning back
and just having total clarity
of what we needed to do.
There was fire
and ambulance, and police.
And somehow in that whole crowd,
I managed to spot my mom and sister,
and I remember thinking,
"They can't see me like this."
So I got up and I couldn't
actually straighten out my limbs.
And so I kind of had to walk
a bit odd to the side of the boat...
Beelined it straight for the ambulance,
'cause I didn't want them
to see me in that much pain.
The first casualties
from a volcanic eruption
being stretchered from
White Island clearly suffering burns.
Of course, there's still
a number unaccounted for.
Twenty of them
we believe are seriously injured.
I race into town.
Um...
My mom and dad were there.
One of the skippers said,
"Hayden didn't come off.
He isn't... hasn't come off."
But he wasn't 100 percent
sure where he was.
And we said...
"But no, it's... it can't be. How?"
He said he didn't know whether he's
on a helicopter or not. He wasn't sure.
We had it tapped out, you know,
it was going as fast as we could,
probably 120 knots.
There were some instructions
coming from the Rescue Services,
that we were to fly to the airport
with all the patients,
but I said "No, we're not doing that.
We're going to go to hospital."
It's just straight out of time,
wasted time.
I felt that Rescue Services,
you know, they'd already let us down.
So you know, the hospital wasn't going
to let us down because we'd just arrive.
They were going to go into that hospital
and you had lots of people
that could take care of them quickly.
I had the thought,
"My mom's going to wonder what happened
to us when we just
stop communicating with her at all."
And I still had my cell phone with me.
So, I asked one of the people nearby
to call my mom. I couldn't work it
because it was a fingerprint unlock
and I didn't have any fingerprints left.
Hi Mom, it's me.
I just wanted to let you know,
and this isn't a joke,
the volcano actually erupted
while we were on the Island,
so we're at a hospital in New Zealand.
I don't know how long I'll be here,
but I'll try and
keep you updated as best I can.
At that point, we got separated.
I didn't really understand
how bad of shape I was in.
I certainly didn't expect
I was going to be in a coma in...
in New Zealand for over a month or more.
They cut off my wedding ring
and I remember begging them
not to do that
because I had just gotten married.
I was just heartbroken and...
and I wouldn't look when they cut it off.
You go from a situation where
there's urgency to suddenly
when the urgency stops.
And it's not until that moment then,
when suddenly what we were
doing now had been passed
to a professional,
did we start to process
what had just happened.
I called my wife.
As soon as she answered, I couldn't talk.
You know the tears just started
to come out of nowhere.
Everybody was very,
you know, emotionally
and physically wrecked at that stage.
Jolene, my girlfriend, came over
to pick me up, and I was able to,
you know, hug her and...
that's, I think, when emotionally
everything hit me for the first time.
We heard from the police
there were eight still on the Island
on Whakaari, passed away.
Tipene was one of them.
I dropped on the floor.
I couldn't believe, I couldn't believe
that I was hearing, you know...
Parekura we call it. Tragedy.
Once we got the word
that the last helicopter landed,
you know, I actually rang Mark Law
for an update of what was happening.
I just... I just,
you know, I felt as friends,
you know, like uh... we
just have to let them know,
you know, as soon as possible.
You know, "I was there with Hayden
and he definitely passed away."
He had seen Hayden, and um...
He'd seen him on the Island,
and said that he hadn't made it.
Mark talked
about seeing footsteps in the ash.
And they believe that it was Hayden
and Tipene that had moved about
and helped the final few, I guess,
be comfortable in their last moments.
I know both Tipene and Hayden
put everybody first, before themselves.
But he wasn't coming home.
It is now clear that there
were two groups on the Island,
those who were able to be evacuated
and those who were close to the eruption.
To those who have lost
or are missing family and friends,
we share in your unfathomable grief
at this moment in time and in your sorrow.
Your loved one stood alongside Kiwis
who were hosting you here and we grieve
with you and we grieve with them.
The official death toll
from that volcanic eruption
in New Zealand now stands at eight.
Nine of them
have now been confirmed dead...
the latest, teenage brothers...
Death toll from Monday's
disaster has now risen to at least 15.
Sixteen people died...
He was
a dedicated public servant...
Among the 21 victims
were her husband, Gavin,
and 15-year old daughter, Zoe.
I didn't really know
what had happened for three weeks.
No one had told me still,
but a friend of mine came to
visit me on the Burns Unit,
and I'm like "Oh, how's Hayden?
Like I'm surprised I haven't seen Hayden."
And she just like looked at my family and
yeah, they all burst into tears.
And yeah, that's how I found out.
I woke up on the 17th of December.
My grandfather was the one
that... broke the terrible news to me.
My father was rushed by Mark Law
straight to the hospital,
where unfortunately he,
uh, succumbed to his injuries.
Uh, my mother did pass away on the Island,
and she was uh...
recovered by the
New Zealand Army a few days later.
And they're not sure where my sister was
or what had happened to her body.
When the ancestor,
Ttahi, did die,
it is said in our folklore,
that his spirit,
it had transformed as one
of the guardians of the ocean today.
The dead themselves, they too have
become similar to the ancestor Ttahi.
Whakaari has given
her sanction, her consent,
to have them there as guardians,
kaitiaki, forevermore.
They take their place in time
where they will never be forgotten.
Some days are good,
some days aren't,
if you want me to be 100% honest with you.
I know people are looking at me;
I know people are looking at my hands.
Um... I don't like it.
I always feel like
I have to explain ahead of time
what these are from.
I have days where it's easier than others.
All right.
So brussels sprouts on one side,
apples and sweet potatoes on the other.
My husband and I are training
to run in a half marathon,
so some days
when I'm focused on things like running,
it's good, and yes, I can see my future.
I can see happy days,
and I can look past the volcano.
But, um...
Yeah, some days are really hard.
Yeah.
My ring finger
doesn't really work all that well,
and that really messes
with me on my dominant hand.
At this point, we're still getting
a surgery a month.
The timeline with this recovery
is just so, so, so long.
The eruptions was two minutes,
but the consequences are multiple years.
I understand nobody controls nature,
but you have to at least give me
a chance to make an informed decision.
Had I known what I know now,
there's zero percent chance we would have
ever set foot on the island. Zero.
Yes, so I was burnt
from my boot line
to my shorts line and the back of my legs,
back to my knees was actually spared
because being crouched down,
it actually protected the backs of
my knees which was good.
I knew what could happen out there.
But you don't believe
it will happen to you.
This hasn't changed my opinion
on how I will interact with nature.
I mean, I won't live in a padded room
because what kind of life is that?
I guess I know that
I can get through anything now,
so I mean that's worth something.
Maybe not to anyone else but to me,
it's worth something.
Throughout my
whole stay in hospital,
I made it a really strict point
to take progress photos every other day,
so I can look back at them
and see how far I've come.
I've had 17 surgeries.
I was told that
I would be spending a year in hospital.
But I'm pretty proud to say
that my total stay was
just under two months.
I'm a stubborn bastard.
I refuse to give up.
I'll just keep on trying and trying.
Uh, and I refuse to quit,
no matter how hard it gets.
I still love a risk.
But calculated risk I think
is the word that needs to be said.
They shouldn't have been there.
Should never go there.
I can see Whakaari from my home.
I see it from every room in my home. Yeah.
The less I see of it the better,
to tell you the truth.
So you just shut the curtain, let it be.
Say a little prayer.
Then you do the same thing the next day.
And the next day and...
yeah.
I think, you know, in some ways
we understood the Island,
that it's an unknown outcome.
Mother Nature does what she wants to do.
But there's also human nature.
And in the face of adversity,
it's human nature to go and help.
Ordinary people willing
to give their own lives to help others.
That's what makes people...
the good people in the world who they are.
A lot of positive has come
from such a horrific event.
The Community Support
has been quite overwhelming.
I have friendships
that I wouldn't trade for the world.
You have to take something positive
because otherwise
that cloud will just follow you forever.
My gym, and my work colleagues,
my friends, my family,
are who all push me to keep on going.
They've given me the drive
to keep working hard.
Especially my grandfather, my rock.
He's been with me from the very beginning.
And I would never have been able to make
it this far without his love and support.
[Matt I have a perfect
unburnt spot on my wrist.
That is the exact outline
of where her hand was.
It was like this.
Yep, that's why this hand is much better
than this hand.
Like I can't even make
a fist in this hand, and this hand,
I can make a fist fully.
I will always be by his side. Always.
I just love him so much and
this has made us even closer, I feel like.
I try to get out there every
couple of months and go and say, "Hi."
And Hayden's favorite drink
was a Steinlager beer,
you know, a good Kiwi beer.
And we take a dozen out with us and
we sit out there and whoever's with us,
we have a couple of drinks and we
always pour one in the ocean, you know?
As much as I hate wasting one,
we always pour one in
and give him a drink.
So you do, you look for little moments
and you look for signs,
I guess to find
your ways of moving forward.
In the face of Mother Nature,
and all that she can throw at us,
we've still got to remember that
as humans, we'll always have each other.
The works Thy Hand hath made
I see the stars
I hear the mighty
Thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed
Then sings my soul
My Savior God, to Thee
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul
My Savior God, to Thee
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul
My Savior God, to Thee
How great!
- How great!
- How great!
- How great Thou
- Art!
Subtitle translation by: Ayolope Koiki