NZ Volcano eruption on White Island
 

Early reports are often unreliable.
50 tourists were thought to be on the island and 23 have been accounted for so far, five of them confirmed dead. Every survivor had injuries :(
Some tourists were from the cruise ship Ovation of the Seas.
This link shows a damaged AS 350 (?) adjacent what looks to be a raised pad.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...no-new-zealand

2018 Video of heli operations.
Mjb

White Island Eruption
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-50711958

Third image down, abandoned Helicopter? centre right, hope everyone is ok. Looks like a damned good force landing.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....08a024802f.jpg

Another video showed the wreckage of a helicopter that had been flying over the island when the eruption happened.
Volcanic Air, a tour company based in Rotorua, later confirmed that the pilot and four passengers were unharmed and had returned to the mainland via boat on Monday afternoon.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/q...-island-erupts

https://volcanicair.co.nz/fleet/

I suspect that the AS350 in that picture was not flying over the island but was on the ground. You can visit White Island via a boat trip of several hours or via a 30 minute helicopter ride. Both tours leave from the closest town - Whakatane (pronounced with an F).

White Island is described as New Zealand's most active volcano, but the activity is mostly steam from fumaroles and a nearly-boiling crater lake. There are occasional, infrequent explosive discharges of steam and ash (phreatic eruptions) like yesterday's. There has not been eruption of lava in at least 200 years.

When I visited White Island ten years ago, R44s were being used and one was already on the ground when we arrived. The landing area is about 700 m from the active crater lake which is consistent with the location of the AS350 in Nutloose's picture.

Helicopter landing area with the crater in the background:
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b3c1753fd6.jpg

Fumaroles. The steam is continuously venting with a sound like a large, subterranean steam-engine. A strong sulphur smell in the air:
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fa7c51fb3d.jpg


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....afd3dc12f.jpeg


Crater lake - 90º C and a pH similar to battery acid:
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....db8daa9cb4.jpg

Our pilot/guide returning to the helicopter. We were issued with hard hats and respirators, but I imagine these would not have been much use in yesterday's eruption:
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....de269d2324.jpg

White Island is private land. I suspect that after this accident, the rules may change or it may even be taken over by the government:
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....08e69b34a.jpeg

My guess is a big rock coming down. It's not only ash that gets thrown upwards during an eruption....

I agree. See the rocks in the foreground of the first picture I posted. They were parts of the crater wall, blown out during an eruption.

Quote" "White Island is private land. I suspect that after this accident, the rules may change or it may even be taken over by the government"

That isn't how the Govt works in NZ. They won't take over the island. There will certainly be a look over operations to the island, especially considering the eruption risk recently increased.

People tend to forget that it is VERY active. There are still 10 bodies there somewhere from 1914 when the Sulphur mine disappeared in a mud slide. Only the cat survived.

We regularly had Tsunami drills at school. The crater is barely above sea level and if it does blow, the rapid influx of sea water would set up a catastrophic explosion similar but smaller to Krakatoa. In my town we had 4 minutes (from very distant memory!) to get out. So our drill was to hide under our desks. Hmmmmm.

It is an unforgettable experience walking in the crater. Even more so when you come to the end of the path, only to find that the path did continue on the day before but has now been swallowed by the volcano!

I used to fly tours out there for the red rash early in my career. White Island experiences 100's of earthquakes a day somedays but mostly only minor and you'd never know unless you were looking at the seismographs. About the end of my time there I spent two days with the geologists ferrying them around while they installed equipment. That was around the time of the first of the big Christchuch quakes in around 2010/11. We were on our way out when all their phones started pinging, much conversation followed in the aircraft about CHCH going off. WI is a very interesting place and as was said above eye opening when a section of track that you walked yesterday or this morning isn't there anymore. I would not be surprised if this quake is just a warm up.

According to reports in NZ, four helicopters landed on White Island in the immediate aftermath of the eruption, and rescued all the victims who were accessible - the eight left behind had almost certainly already passed away. One machine was a HEMS, the others were private aircraft.
The pilots - and the onboard paramedic(s) in the HEMS - willingly took themselves and their aircraft into an extremely hazardous landing zone: the wrecked machine shown in the first post being a visible warning to them all. For all any of them knew, the volcano could let loose again at any time.

Thanks and major applause to those crews

Well done these crews... Respect and admiration. Fly safe and sad condolences to families of those who did not escape in time.

I did a trip to White Island in 1997 about a year before I moved from Gisborne to Wairarapa.

It was with a company called Vulcan Helicopters, but I don't think they exist any more.

We flew out there in a Hughes 500, four of us plus the pilot.

It was an amazing trip, but I got the feeling it could potentially be a very dangerous place and the air was full of sulphur fumes.

And as for talk about banning tours to White Island … New Zealand loses hundreds of people in motor vehicle crashes on our roads every year.

So does this mean we should ban using motor vehicles on roads? After all, motor vehicle crashes kill many, many, many times more people than volcanos do in NZ.

Guys, my photo was of my first JetRanger after being caught in a volcanic eruption in Rabaul, many years ago. It wasn't NZ nor White Island.

Here's a further image of the Volcanic Air AS350 from yesterday


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6dd8feb753.jpg

Blown off its perch John!

Re Post 15..
Looks like a Cessna 402 with its engines (and front cowls) removed.

Just read a news article, the chickenlickens are already asking why people are allowed to go there? OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!

News last night had an unfortunate video taken from an elevated position of a party of about four individuals walking a path close to the crater a minute before it blew. RIP I assume.

Those chickenlickens should be asking why people are allowed to drive motor vehicles on New Zealand's roads.

Motor vehicle crashes on NZ roads kill hundreds of people every year … way more than any volcano has ever killed in New Zealand, including the Mount Tarawera eruption and the Tangiwai rail disaster.