WHAKATANE, New Zealand — Unstable conditions hampered rescue workers Tuesday from searching for at least eight people missing and feared dead after a volcano off the New Zealand coast erupted in a towering blast of ash and scalding steam while dozens of tourists explored its moon-like surface. Five deaths have been confirmed.
After Monday afternoon’s eruption, helicopter crews had landed on White Island despite the danger and helped evacuate many survivors, some of them suffering critical burns. But officials said Tuesday they were still working with scientific experts to determine when it would be safe to return to the island to search for the missing.
Aircraft have flown over the island repeatedly, and “no signs of life have been seen at any point,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.
Russell Clark, an intensive care paramedic worker, said the scene looked like the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, “just blanketed in ash. The eruption sent a plume of steam and ash an estimated 12,000 feet into the air. One of the rescue boats that returned from the island was covered with ash half a meter thick, Ardern said.
“It was quite an overwhelming feeling. There was a helicopter on the island that had obviously been there at the time, with its rotor blades off it,” Clark told New Zealand broadcaster TVNZ. “I can only imagine what it was like for the people there at the time — they had nowhere to go.
“We didn’t find any survivors on the island,” Clark said.
White Island, also known by the indigenous Maori name Whakaari, is the tip of an undersea volcano some 30 miles off mainland New Zealand. Scientists had noted an uptick in volcanic activity in recent weeks, and questions were being raised about why tourists were still being allowed on the island.
Many of the 47 visitors on the island at the time of the eruption were Australian, and Ardern said New Zealanders and tourists from the United States, China, Britain and Malaysia were also affected. Some of the visitors were passengers from the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Ovation of the Seas.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 11 Australians are unaccounted for and 13 were hospitalized. Three Australians were suspected to be among the initial five confirmed dead, he told reporters in Sydney. “I fear there is worse news to come,” Morrison said.
Relatives of a newlywed American couple say the husband and wife were severely burned. Barbara Barham told The Washington Post that her daughter Lauren Urey, 32, and son-in-law Matthew Urey, 36, from Richmond, Virginia, were on a honeymoon trip.