Words: Cherie Howie
Editor: David Rowe
Design: Paul Slater
Graphics: Phil Welch

It was a beautiful day, in a beautiful place, and they were running into the sea.  Behind them, these terrified visitors from near and far, a towering plume of steam, rock and ash was blasting 3600 metres into the sky. 

It was 2.11pm on Monday and Whakaari/White Island, New Zealand’s most active volcano, was erupting.

“It’s a not particularly big eruption,” GeoNet’s Dr Ken Gledhill would later tell media.

“[It’s] almost like a throat-clearing eruption and that’s probably why material won’t make it to the mainland.”

He was right, the mainland, most significantly Whakatāne and neighbouring settlements 48 kilometres away, were safe from the deadly hydrogen sulphide gases (at a high concentration one breath is a heart-stopper) searing steam and half a metre of falling ash. The 47 people from seven countries on the volcano at the time of the eruption, however, were not.

By nightfall, five would be confirmed dead, with three more later succumbing in hospitals. By daybreak another eight would be declared missing, presumed dead. 

And for the 31 others, most with extensive burns, the journey to survival that started for some with that first, desperate dash into the sea, had just begun.

Half an hour before blue skies turned to black, and a day of pleasurable discovery turned into a hopelessly one-sided battle against the awesome power of nature, Michael Schade was standing on the rim of White Island’s main crater. 

Only the wind rumbling on his microphone and the soft murmur of other White Island visitors could be heard as the young American panned his smartphone across the desolate landscape, its edges caked in yellow and steam rising from its centre.

At 1.49pm Schade took his last photo on the volcano before an inflatable dinghy carried him to the larger boat which ferries tourists across the open water of eastern Bay of Plenty to Whakatāne Wharf.

As he waited to begin the hour-long return journey, a GeoNet monitoring camera on the crater rim captured a group of tiny dots. They were people, protected only by canary-yellow hard hats and black gas masks, walking near the crater.

It was 2.10pm.

Like Schade, Hamilton pastor Geoff Hopkins had also enjoyed a successful visit to the volcano, a birthday gift from his geology student daughter Lillani. Their boat was still in Crater Bay, the sheltered access for those travelling to and from White Island by water. 

“As we turned to start heading back, there was just this gasp across the boat and I looked up. I could just see this plume of white and grey rising quite high and quite quickly,” he later told the Herald.

"At that moment, it was quite beautiful. We were watching a volcano erupt in front of our very eyes.”

Our disasters are usually noisy affairs. Tectonic plates don’t clash quietly. Swollen rivers roar ominously before bursting banks. And former cyclones fast-track howling winds and pouring rain from the tropics to our shores most autumns. 

But when the worst came on White Island, it came in silence, Hopkins says.

It was a silence that would not last.

The shock and terror of those on the island at the time of the eruption - later confirmed by scientists to actually be two in quick succession - is yet to be expressed publicly. 

But footage of those, such as Schade and Hopkins, on boats nearby has been seen by millions around the world.

On Brazilian tourist Allessandro Kauffmann’s tour boat, which left the volcano five minutes before the eruption, shaky footage laid bare the fear of witnesses.

Alarmed pleas of “go inside, go inside” are yelled to those watching the eruption from the boat’s deck.

Schade’s video, also taken in the minutes after the eruption and viewed more than 5.5 million times on Twitter, shows the view outside the speeding boat’s window. 

Only three colours can be seen for much of the footage - white seaspray, teal-coloured water and dark grey volcanic plume. 

Through the clamour of fearful voices on the five-second video, one man can be heard over and over.

“No, no, no, no, no, no.”

There was no doubt from any witnesses that they were watching a major disaster unfold.

Police were alerted by 2.17pm. At 2.30pm GeoNet issued a Volcanic Alert Bulletin, raising White Island’s volcanic alert level from 2 to 4, signalling danger on the entire island and the possibility of a very large eruption. 

But agencies were far away. 

Help would come first from those closest, with tour-boat drivers turning rescuer and tourists becoming first-aiders, using whatever tools and nous they could muster.

Schade’s boat, initially driven far away from the danger, soon returned to Crater Bay.

Photos and videos taken by the stunned San Franciscan around 10 minutes after the eruption revealed a distressing aftermath.

The 1.2-tonne Eurocopter AS350 Squirrel helicopter looked to have been blown off its landing pad by a "hurricane-style" current direct from the crater, University of Auckland volcanologist Professor Phil Shane would later tell the Herald.

The image was shocking. But worse was to come.

As a large plume continued to rise from the crater, Schade’s next video showed close to two dozen ash-covered survivors crowding the jetty. Others sought relief in the cloudy green seawater below. 

Among the many tales of bravery on Monday was that of White Island Tours boat skipper Paul Kingi, who returned to the island again and again, until he was sure no more obvious survivors remained.

Another of Schade’s photos showed brightly dressed survivors escaping the island on a packed  dinghy, a surreal scene when set against the grey-carpeted moonscape behind.

At the front of the tiny inflatable a White Island Tours guide, clad in the company’s blue-and-white striped uniform, placed one arm under the elbow of a tourist.

The other rested on the shoulder of an injured colleague.

For Schade and the others on the boat, their first views of the survivors came from the safety of distance.

That protection would soon be shattered.

Schade would later sum up the return journey to Whakatāne, tending to the gravely injured, in one word: “Indescribable”.

For Hopkins, the horrible reality sunk in when the first dinghy-load of survivors arrived and someone yelled, “Is anyone a doctor?”

Two responded, one Slovenian, the other British. Hopkins and his daughter are trained in first aid and also did their best to help.

As water was poured over the survivors’ scalded skin on the boat’s outside decks, and some drifted in and out of consciousness, Hopkins tried to comfort them.

“[I said] ‘everything’s alright’.”

But he knew everything wasn’t alright.

Apart from those in the helicopter at the time of the eruption -  Volcanic Air later confirmed two passengers suffered burns, but two others weren’t hurt after they followed pilot Brian De Pauw’s instructions to get in the water with him - the remainder of the 23 survivors on the boat, most clad only in shorts and T-shirts on a warm summer’s afternoon, were “horrifically burnt”.

“Their faces were massively burnt. But there were also huge burns under people’s clothes. So their clothes looked fine, but when you cut them off  … I’ve never seen blisters like that.”

And then they started screaming in pain.

Halfway back to the mainland, a Coastguard boat dropped off paramedics, and they tried to give the survivors - among them five deemed critically injured - pain relief.

But the paramedics struggled to find veins under burned skin as the boat bounced over the waves, Hopkins said.

Some of the injured started to go into shock. They became cold, so instead of asking for water to pour on burns, a plea was made to the 30 or so passengers on the boat for coats and jackets.

“People were taking their T-shirts off to give us clothes to try and keep people warm on the way back. I remember three Asian tourists that huddled together under a big waterproof duffle bag."

Selfless acts, big and small. The volcano was mighty, but so were those who tried, in whatever way they could, and in some cases despite immense danger, to help.

As some of the injured were sped across water to safety, a second wave of help would soon come from above.

In an act Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would describe as “incredibly brave”, rescue and civilian helicopters landed on the island following the eruption.

Kāhu NZ pilot Mark Law led a team of three helicopter crews who over an hour rescued 12 people from the island, most so badly injured they couldn’t talk.

“We heard [emergency services] were not coming to the island,” Law, who has flown sightseers to White Island for a decade, told the Guardian.

Descending to 60m over the crater, Law, a former soldier who has served in African war zones, said he could see people “lying down or spread-eagled”.

Landing on the centre of the island and running through dust that felt like “talcum powder” they found people “in real distress”, he told the Guardian.

He had seen dead bodies before but was still shaken by the horror of White Island, where he and his colleague loaded five people into each of their two helicopters and another two people into a third helicopter which had followed them, Law told the Guardian.

“The burns were horrific. A lot of the people couldn’t talk … the only real words were things like, ‘Help’. They were covered in ash and dust. We were picking them up and skin was coming off in our hands.”

Rotorua pilot Tim Barrow from Volcanic Air Safaris, also part of the rescue effort, described the aftermath as like a scene from Armageddon - grey, dusty and hard to breathe. 

But seven men retrieved 12 survivors, carrying some on their shoulders. Two survivors died in his helicopter before reaching hospital, Barrow said.

He would ignore the rules again in a heartbeat.

Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter 2 also landed on the island mid-afternoon, with an experienced intensive care paramedic and St John’s medical director spending 30 to 40 minutes looking for survivors. 

They found none.

By now a full emergency response was well underway. 

An emergency operation centre had been set up at Whakatāne Hospital to work alongside civil defence, who by 3.15pm had also issued a national warning systems message about potential volcanic hazards. 

Rescue helicopters from around the country were flying to help and St John were working with the Coastguard, air ambulance operators and district health boards in response to the disaster.

At Whakatāne Wharf, where owners moved their boats to give emergency services room, ambulances lined up to meet the wounded. Relatives, some wailing, arrived.

There was confusion around numbers, but by 5pm police were able to revise the number of people believed on or around White Island at the time of the eruption from 100 to fewer than 50.

The first death was confirmed just after 6.30pm, by 9pm the toll had risen to five, all among the 23 injured immediately taken off the island. 

Police couldn’t say how many remained on the island, and said it was too risky to go ashore - GeoNet having earlier said there remained a 50 per cent chance of another smaller or similar eruption within 24 hours.

At midnight all hope for those on the island was lost - police said aerial reconnaissance flights over the island had found no signs of life.

By morning, we began hearing their names.

The first was White Island Tours guide Hayden Marshall-Inman, remembered by many for his kindness.

“Hayden is close to our hearts. Every week, he left $5 at the counter to pay for the next person,” Claire and Aaron Blair, owners of the Four Square Supermarket in Marshall-Inman’s home town of Ōhope Beach, wrote on Facebook.

“This has been happening for years so there will be many recipients of his kindness.”

Marshall-Inman’s kindness was also remembered by a woman who toured White Island in July.

“I don’t have good health so your beautiful brother stayed with me and took me on an easier track, we had so much fun.

“He held my hand to steady me.”

Fellow guide Tipene Maangi is among the missing, while Jake Milbank - who turned 19 on the day of the eruption - is in Middlemore Hospital with burns to 80 per cent of his body.

Thirty-eight of those on White Island when the eruption occurred were passengers on Royal Caribbean’s Tauranga-docked Ovation of the Seas cruise ship, trading deckchairs for a seven-hour, $496-per-person tour marketed by Royal Caribbean marketed as an “unforgettable adventure”.

On Wednesday, Brisbane mum Julie Richards, 47, and her 20-year-old daughter Jessica were the first passengers to be confirmed among the dead.

Several other Australian families have been devastated after their dream holiday turned to disaster.

“We’re off cruising … Bon voyage, everyone!” Kristine Langford wrote on Instagram below a photo of her and two family members sailing below the Sydney Harbour Bridge five days before the eruption.

The North Sydney mum, her husband Anthony and their 17-year-old daughter Winona are among the missing. In a glimmer of hope, son Jesse Langford, 19, has been found in a hospital.

His condition isn’t known, but the outlook is grave for many of the injured - of 30 patients in six hospitals yesterday, 25 were in a critical condition. By today, five had been flown to Australian hospitals on special flights.

Sports-loving Sydney brothers Matthew Hollander, 13, and Berend Hollander, 16, were today confirmed to have died in hospital, their school headmaster wrote in a letter to students and parents.

The boys' parents, Martin and Barbara Hollander, remain unaccounted for.

An Adelaide family of three has also been devastated - lawyer Gavin Dallow, 53, and his step daughter, Zoe Hosking, 17, died; wife and mum Lisa Dallow, a 48-year-old petroleum engineer, is in hospital with severe burns.

“He was a generous man, always helping his family and his community,” Dallow’s family said.

"[And] our hearts break at the loss of Zoe at such a young age.”

Coffs Harbour friends Jason Griffiths, 33, and couple Karla Mathews and Richard Elzer, both 32, are also being mourned after losing their lives in the disaster. 

They were part of a group of nine friends on Ovation of the Seas, their friends said in a statement. 

"We enjoyed the first five days of our trip and have many memories that will stay with us forever.”

Others escaped with their lives, but devastating injuries, including burns and breathing problems. 

American honeymooners Lauren and Matthew Urey, both badly burned, are in hospitals at opposite ends of the country. 

It was a situation that left Lauren Urey’s mother, Barbara Barham, first feeling shock and then anger, as she heard GeoNet had last month raised White Island’s alert level to 2 because of increasing amounts of sulphur dioxide gas - a key indicator of rising magma deep in its bowels.

“I'm just livid,” she told the Washington Post.

“My son-in-law never would have booked the excursion if he knew there was any chance of them being injured.”

Three days have passed since White Island erupted.

WorkSafe and police are investigating, and a legal expert has said tour operators could potentially face manslaughter charges.

The Prime Minister has told parliament the big questions “must be asked and answered”.

One question that won’t be asked is why White Island erupted. 

It erupted because it’s an active volcano and has been for at least 150,000 years.

The stratovolcano, whose 321m-high chunk of rock is just the tip of a monstrous submarine mountain rising 1.6km from the sea floor, has also taken lives before. Ten sulphur miners paid the ultimate price when a crater wall collapse sparked the landslide which buried their camp in 1914.

Nature gives, and nature takes. 

Two days after Monday’s tragedy, historian Buddy Mikaere wrote of a chatty tui who wakes him before dawn each day, but who is also a happy reminder of our good fortune to live in a time where nature still has a role.

A bit like the seawater which both soothed and protected those escaping the hellish gases, steam and ash swirling around those unlucky enough to find themselves on White Island three days ago.

But Monday also told us nature was “not always a giver of the ineffable sweetness that our tui sings about”, Mikaere wrote.

“The tragic events on Whakaari/White Island this week are a reminder of the other face of nature; no longer the benign beating heart of our world but a monstrous, unfeeling force that in the blink of an eye extinguished the lives of a party of curious day-trippers. 

“Nature in the raw.”