Desperate efforts are underway to locate any additional survivors of a deadly volcanic eruption on New Zealand’s White Island Monday, which killed at least five people and injured at least a dozen more, CNN reports.
The eruption took place with little warning early Monday afternoon local time while dozens of tourists from nearby cruise ship Ovation of the Seas were touring the volcano.
New Zealand is located in one of the world’s most tectonically-volatile regions. Vulcanologists said that while the eruption was relatively small compared to other past disasters, anyone close to the site would have been in serious danger.
So far, 23 people have been evacuated from the island since the eruption, according to New Zealand National Operation Commander Deputy Commissioner John Tims, all with some degree of injuries. The five who have since died were among the evacuees.
The deputy commissioner said that there has been no further communication from the island since the evacuations but at least 10 people are believed to still be ashore. However, Tims said it was currently unsafe to send emergency crews to search for them.
“The island is unstable … the physical envicronment is unsafe for us to return,” Tims told reporters.
Tourist Michael Schade and his family had been on the volcano just 20 minutes before it erupted. They were waiting on a boat, about to leave, when the eruption occurred.
Schade took videos of the ride leaving the island, showing giant plumes of thick black smoke as the boat quickly departed.
“Boat ride home … was indescribable,” Schade wrote on Twitter. “Those are some of the people (our) boat picked up. Praying for them and their recovery. Woman my mom tended to was in critical condition but seemed strong by the end.”
A powerful volcanic eruption has rocked New Zealand’s White Island, a small uninhabited volcanic islet sticking up out of the sea in the Bay of Plenty, 50 kilometres offshore of the country’s North Island.
Although details are currently a little sparse, the New Zealand police force suspects that fewer than 50 people were present on the island when the eruption took the visitors by surprise. At the time of writing, several people have been injured, some reportedly with serious burns, and some have been evacuated to the mainland. At least seven people are critically injured.
A number of people on the island are currently unaccounted for. Five people have died, and this number could rise as time goes by. More people remain on the island, and reconnaissance flights over the island suggest that there are no survivors left – but it’s unclear how many more people perished other than those confirmed five.
Plenty of news reports will focus on those injured by the eruption, and understandably so. Here, you’ll find some scientific information that should provide some background as to why this took place. As ever, I’ll update this as more information comes in, when I can.
On Monday December 9th at 14:11pm in New Zealand’s time zone, (late at night on Sunday, Eastern Time), an eruption took place at White Island, also known by its Māori name Whakaari. It has been described by GeoNet – an official scientific initiative that’s a collaboration between the New Zealand government’s Earthquake Commission and New Zealand-based geoscience institute GNS Science – as an impulsive, short-lived event that affected the crater floor. The activity, they wrote, appears to have diminished since the eruption.
The event generated an ash plume that rose 12,000 metres or so above the vent. As seen by webcam images, ash blanketed the crater floor, and ashfall seems to be more or less confined to the island.