Active
Call me crazy but maybe an active volcano is not an ideal tourist destination? Possibly?
Because
There are 5 dead and 8 missing.
The survivors were taken off the uninhabited island by boat or by helicopter. Emergency services have so far been unable to search the area because of dangerous conditions, with plumes of smoke and ash continuing to rise above the volcano on Tuesday.
Tourists had been seen walking inside the crater of White Island volcano moments before it erupted.
White Island, also called Whakaari, is the country’s most active volcano. Despite that, the privately owned island is a tourist destination with frequent day tours and scenic flights available.
Maybe that’s not actually such a brilliant idea? An active volcano?
Prime Minister Ardern paid tribute to helicopter crews who had flown to the island on Monday to bring people out despite the dangers.
“I want to acknowledge the courageous decision made by first responders and those pilots who in their immediate rescue efforts made an incredibly brave decision under extraordinarily dangerous circumstances in an attempt to get people out,” she said.
And maybe let’s not put them in danger that way any more.
There are few details about those caught in the eruption. Some who had gone to the island were passengers from the Ovation of the Seas, a cruise ship owned by Royal Caribbean.
Small world thing here: I’m acquainted with that ship, because in the summer it does Seattle to Alaska cruises and it ties up at a pier at the bottom of the hill I live at the top of which. I can’t see it from here but I can hear it, and if I go outside and walk a couple of minutes to the view wall I can see it just fine, which is how I know its name.
There was a group of people inside the crater just before the blast, so those will be the 8 missing.
The island, also known as Whakaari, is privately owned and is typically visited by thousands of tourists every year, despite the fact that it has been erupting in some form since 2011.
Geological hazard monitors GeoNet pass on information about the volcano’s activity to tour operators and the police, but tourists make their own decisions about whether to visit.
Visitors are supplied with hard hats and gas masks to protect against sulphurous steam and must have suitable footwear to make the tour, according to New Zealand website Stuff.
The owners of Whakatane-based company White Island Tours are the official guardians of the island, which was declared a private scenic reserve in 1952, and they grant access through designated tour operators.
According to the New Zealand Herald, White Island Tours warned on its website that visitors “should be aware that there is always a risk of eruptive activity regardless of the alert level”, while stating it followed a “comprehensive safety plan which determines” its activities on the island “at the various levels”.
Including letting people go inside the crater?
I went into a volcanic crater in New Mexico. The volcano was dormant, and has been for millennia. I would not go into an active volcano crater. But then, I teach Earth Science (though I don’t think that sort of credential should be needed to tell someone not to go inside a crater that could erupt at any time).
I studied geology at university and although I’ve never worked in the field it’s also been a hobby. I’ve stood on the beach at Whakatane looking at White Island erupting. I’ve considered visiting, but decided that the risk was outside my tolerance because with phreatic eruptions you get no advance warning. The other thing about the White Island crater is that it’s not really a crater in the text book sense. It’s a very broad, open, area with a lake in a declivity at the nw end and a large rim behind it. It gives the sense of being open rather than actually in a crater.
Sadly these are not the first lives to be lost to volcano tourism in NZ or elsewhere and they won’t be the last.
Rob, I’m not particularly familiar with that volcano. It sounds like it might be a caldera?
Rob – I cycled up from Turangi through Tongariro National Park when Ngaurahoe was steaming from vents and the side roads were closed with notices about the volcano. I imagined everyone was a bit blase about geo-thermal activity unless specifically warned.
My sister was on White Island earlier in the year.
Iknklast, it’s a fairly typical marine andesitic volcano. Essentially just the peak of the mountain sits out of the water. At some stage the side of the crater has blown out and eroded to create the relatively large open area. There’s some good details and photos in the Wiki page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whakaari_/_White_Island
White Island sits at the north end of the Taupo volcanic zone, which stretches from Ruapehu in the south past Taupo and Rotorua to White Island. You can then follow the Tonga-Kermadec trench along the plate boundary.
Taupo and Rotorua represent classic calderas. The largest of the Taupo eruptions (~70,000 years ago) would be broadly the equivalent of the Yellowstone Lava Creek eruption, maybe a touch bigger. Part of the reason NZ is so pretty and has such varied scenery is because we uniquely straddle a location where we sit on a plate margin that transitions from an east to west subduction zone (partly above sea level) on the east coast of North Island to a strike slip boundary on South Island (Alpine Fault) to a west to east subduction zone to the south west of SI. The toss in a sprinkling of other random geological processes that arise from having sat near plate boundaries and it’s all quite scenic, exotic and potentially dangerous.
Come and visit!
KBPlayer, it’s incredible scenery. Even more so if you understand what you’re looking at. For those unfamiliar, the whole central North Island is an active volcanic zone, as is Taranaki to the west and Coromandel, Auckland and Northland to the north. Give me plain old strike slip earthquakes like we have in the South Island any day…
Rob – yes I have to say I’m woefully ignorant about geology.
It is wonderful, and in summer so few people, the roads are empty. As you near Rotorua the scenery looks like Japanese paintings with bonsai vegetation. And the clear light. (Homesick as I type).
And at the end of the cycle you wallow in a hot spring.
Rob, I would love to. New Zealand is definitely on my wish list, not just for Geology but for Botany. If I ever find the time, the money, and the energy all at the same time…
Mine too (wish list).
I’d dearly love to meet a number of you in person. If you do ever find the money, energy and time make contact. Maybe Ophelia would agree to pass initial contact details on so we don’t have to post in the clear?
@2 above I was of course (cough) speaking of botany (cough) when I typed beech, rather than beach.
Rob, I just imagined you standing in the top of a tree trying to get a better look. ;-)
Sure, I’ll share contact details on request.
Ophelia, I don’t know that we tell you enough how much we value this little community you provide us and the central role you play in it. Thank you.
For some reason I read this as “I’d dearly love to meet a number of you in prison”.
Active volcano-wise, I’ve been to Vesuvius. It’s probably not a great idea to build a city of 3m people next to an active volcano, either. When I visited, there was a bus-load of school kids there on a trip. The teacher was explaining very earnestly about safety and all the kids were gleefully jumping up and down on the crater as hard as they could.
HI Rob. I will go to NZ in the next year or two and it would be great to meet up. Where do you live?
Latsot, please, not when I’m drinking. :-)
KBPlayer, that would be neat. Currently Christchurch, but in two years hopefully we will have moved further south. Be sure to touch base closer to time.
Rob- will do. My family & friends live in the North Island, but I do have one friend in the south and I missed the SI last time.
Rob @ 14 – aw thank you.
Vesuvius – that’s the truth. And it’s not even just Vesuvius: on the other side of Naples there’s a neighborhood or suburb cozily nestled inside a caldera, and the thing underneath is not dead.
Campi Flegrei, it’s called.