TOURISTS are injured and feared dead after a massive volcano eruption on a remote island off New Zealand on Monday. A huge plume of smoke and rock blasted from the White Island volcano at around 2:10pm local time – just minutes after visitors were spotted trekking through its crater in a chilling last photo. New […]
TOURISTS are injured and feared dead after a massive volcano eruption on a remote island off New Zealand on Monday.
A huge plume of smoke and rock blasted from the White Island volcano at around 2:10pm local time – just minutes after visitors were spotted trekking through its crater in a chilling last photo.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ahern said 100 people were on or near the island at the time of the “very significant” blast.
She warned that people were unaccounted for after the violent eruption – which experts marked as four out of a maximum five for its power.
The PM said: “A number of people are reportedly injured and are being transported to shore.”
A scientific monitoring camera appeared to capture a group of tourists walking through the volcano’s crater at 2:10pm – minutes before the eruption.
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The camera – which takes a new still image every ten minutes – did not take another and is believed to have been destroyed in the blast.
A fleet of rescue helicopters was dispatched to send emergency workers to the area in the hope of finding survivors.
Tourists from Royal Caribbean cruise liner Ovation Of The Seas were visiting the island on Monday morning, according chief executive Mark Cairns.
Mr Cairns claimed the majority of those injured in the eruption are from the ship.
Calvin Kingi, of White Island Tours, said his company’s group got off the island just in time.
He wrote on Facebook: “White Island just erupted as we left, we have our work mates and a tour still on the island, I hope they okay.”
Authorities asked people on North Island, one of New Zealand’s two main islands, to avoid areas nearest the volcano – about 30 miles from the mainland.
The “short-lived eruption” threw an ash plume about 12,000ft high, New Zealand’s geoscience agency GNS Science said in a statement.
White Island, northeast of the North Island town of Tauranga, is regularly visited by small groups of tourists – but it’s not clear how many were visiting at the time.
The cone volcano is New Zealand’s most active and about 70 per cent of it is below sea level.
Twelve people were killed on the island in 1914 when it was being mined for sulphur.
Part of a crater wall collapsed and a landslide destroyed the miners’ village and the mine itself.
The remains of buildings from another mining enterprise in the 1920s are now a tourist attraction
The island became a private scenic reserve in 1953, and daily tours allow more than 10,000 people to visit the volcano every year.
White Island is also known by the indigenous Maori name Whakaari.
More to follow…
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