'No Signs of Life': Five Dead, Many More Missing After Volcano Eruption Rocks Island in New Zealand
At least five people are dead and more than 20 are missing after a volcano erupted Monday on White Island off the coast of New Zealand.
Police said aerial surveillance was launched in the aftermath of the 2:11 p.m. eruption.
“No signs of life have been seen at any point,” New Zealand police said in a statement. “Police believe that anyone who could have been taken from the island alive was rescued at the time of the evacuation. Based on the information we have, we do not believe there are any survivors on the island.”
Drones were set to be launched to further ascertain conditions on the island, authorities said.
“The experts that we’ve spoken to have said it is unsafe for us to go on that island. The island is unstable, the physical environment is unsafe for us to return to the island,” New Zealand police deputy commissioner John Tims told reporters, according to Fox News.
“It is important that we consider the health and safety of those that will return to the island.”
— Michael Schade (@sch) December 9, 2019
The current estimate is that fewer than 50 people were on this island at the time of eruption.
An unknown number of individuals were taken to area hospitals.
Twenty-three people had been rescued from the island, The Guardian reported. It’s believed that more than two dozen people were stranded on the island, though the exact number of missing people was unknown.
Many of those affected by the incident were passengers on the cruise ship Ovation of the Seas, police said.
Eyewitness Michael Schade said he had been to the Volcano’s crater 30 minutes prior to the eruption.
“We had just got on the boat … then someone pointed it out and we saw it,” he told the BBC.
“I was basically just shocked. The boat turned back and we grabbed some people that were waiting on the pier.”
My god, White Island volcano in New Zealand erupted today for first time since 2001. My family and I had gotten off it 20 minutes before, were waiting at our boat about to leave when we saw it. Boat ride home tending to people our boat rescued was indescribable. #whiteisland pic.twitter.com/QJwWi12Tvt
— Michael Schade (@sch) December 9, 2019
Some commentators said people had no business being on the island in the first place.
“White Island has been a disaster waiting to happen for many years,” Raymond Cas, a professor emeritus at Monash University in Australia, told the Australian Science Media Centre, according to The Guardian.
“Having visited it twice, I have always felt that it was too dangerous to allow the daily tour groups that visit the uninhabited island volcano by boat and helicopter,” he said.
“It has a very active geothermal system with many steaming gas vents and varying numbers of hot water filled crater lakes in the floor of an amphitheater-shaped large crater,” Cas added.
Associate professor Derek Wyman, a geoscientist at Sydney University, also said the island was known to be dangerous.
“I certainly wouldn’t be recommending tourists be approaching a site that has recently been throwing material up 30 meters into the air,” he told Australia’s SBS News.
Wyman said it was not the size of the eruption that was deadly, but the proximity of people to the volcano.
“New Zealand sees things like this quite frequently,” he said. “Usually people don’t die from these kinds of eruptions, but that is likely because they are not usually inappropriately close.”
“In the scheme of things, for volcanic eruptions, it is not large,” Ken Gledhill of GeoNet, an agency that monitors volcanic activity, told The Associated Press. “But if you were close to that, it is not good.”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
