New eruption rocks infamous NZ volcano

A minor eruption has taken place at New Zealand’s White Island volcano where 22 people died five years ago.

New Zealand’s geological monitoring service Geonet confirmed the eruption on occurred on Friday afternoon, raising the Volcanic Alert Level to 3.

Geoff Kilgour, duty volcanologist, said satellite data indicated the plume from Whakaari/White Island contained a minor amount of volcanic ash.

He said most of the activity was concentrated between 1-3pm and the ash was being dispersed east-northeast of the island, towards the northern end of East Cape.

“Whakaari is currently experiencing a period of elevated unrest and short-lived steam and ash emissions could continue for some time,” Mr Kilgour said.

“There is a low probability of this ash affecting the mainland.”

Mr Kilgour said there were no sensors on the island, with volcanologists relying on remote cameras and satellites which made it difficult to monitor short-term changes.

Twenty-two people, including 17 Australians, died when the island’s volcano erupted on December 9, 2019.

Among them, brothers Ben Hollander, 16, his 13-year-old brother Matthew and their parents, Martin and Barbara, died.

Brisbane mother and daughter Julie and Jessica Richards, from Brisbane, also died.

There were 47 people on the island for a walking tour at the time.

The remaining 25 survivors suffered injuries, many of them serious.

One of them was Stephanie Browett, who suffered third-degree burns to 70 per cent of her body and lost her father Paul and sister, Krystal.

In 2022, Ms Browett revealed she did not need to wear her facial compression garment or body garment, and that surgeries on her hands had “significantly” improved her motor function.

Earlier this year, White Island’s tourism companies were ordered to pay out $NZ10.2m ($9.56m) in compensation to the victims.

Whakaari Management Limited, the island’s corporate management company, as well as tour companies White Island Tours, Volcanic Air Safaris, Kahu Limited and Aerius Limited were prosecuted by the country’s health and safety regulator WorkSafe NZ.

Whakaari Management Limited was found guilty of two breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act, and was slugged with a $975,000 penalty, and was ordered to pay an additional $4.5m in reparations to victims.

White Island Tours, which operated tours to the island, was also fined $483,000 and was ordered to pay $4.6m in compensation to victims.

Volcanic Air Safaris, which held a licence to take tourists to the island via helicopter, was ordered to pay $470,000 in fines and $300,000 to victims.

Kahu and Aerius were both fined $271,000 and $183,000 respectively.

Handing down his judgment, judge Evangelos Thomas found that the tour operators undertook risk assessments which were “fundamentally inadequate”

“The safety information tour operators provided to their paying customers was wholly inadequate, not sufficiently informing paying customers about the hazards, the risk, the consequences of an eruption,” he said in his published judgment.