Original subtitles

MAN: Go inside, go inside!

INDISTINCT CHATTER

Go inside!

MAN: Oh, my God.

It will be forever etched on my memory.

That day will never go away.

We knew that there were people still on the island,

and I think there was a realisation at that stage

that people still on the island were now engulfed in that ash.

Yeah, we saw just a big plume of smoke

from White Island.

So yeah, we knew we were in for a... for a long day.

So we were just purely flying out there, um,

to see if we could assist in any way.

Get out there as fast as we could,

hope to find no-one there and come home.

But, um, unfortunately, that didn't happen.

HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR

It goes hand in hand when people are visiting Whakatane.

A trip to Whakaari, it's just what you do.

The way it sits there,

majestically out in the ocean like that,

it's a real drawcard.

It's a focal point of that town and of that region.

My name is Ruwani Perera,

and I'm an eastern Bay Of Plenty local.

Whakatane has a population of around 17,000 people,

and it's situated in the eastern Bay Of Plenty in the North Island.

There's a couple of ways you can get to Whakaari/White Island

from Whakatane.

It's about a 20-minute chopper ride, if you're lucky enough, or by boat -

it takes about 80 minutes to get there.

You don't visit Whakatane without a plan to see Whakaari/White Island,

and I guess it's reflected in the amount of tourism dollars

that it brings to this community.

Around 10,000 people are estimated to visit the island each year,

and last year alone brought in about $129 million

to Whakatane and its tourism.

White Island not only commands this sort of majestic view

for people that live there in the eastern Bay Of Plenty,

but it's also spiritually significant to Maori.

The literal translation means to be visible and seen,

but to Maori, really Whakaari is about drama,

it's about putting on a show.

White Island/Whakaari is a beautiful place to visit.

I reckon I've been out there about 500 times.

She's a pretty awesome place out there.

I couldn't imagine anywhere else on Earth

that replicates what's out there.

Just beautiful colours, always changing,

always something different there every time you go.

My name's Jason Hill.

I'm one of the lead pilots here at Kahu.

Tom Storey. I'm a pilot for Kahu Helicopters New Zealand.

Um, so we'd fly out to the island

and then, uh, shut down the helicopter,

and we'd actually, uh, do a tour around the island ourselves.

Um, so we're a pilot and tour guide.

Every day was different out there, more gas, steam, bubbling mud.

Monday, 9th of December 2019

and we had planned a trip to White Island

with Lillani, the two of us.

And we'd been planning this for six months.

Being a geography and geology student,

I was so excited to go.

Um, going to an active volcano was something I'd always wanted to do.

So Whakaari has been active probably for 100,000 or 200,000 years.

My name is Graham Leonard. I'm a volcanologist at GNS Science.

We've been monitoring White Island in various ways for decades.

It's a... It's a very active volcano,

and there's always a chance of an explosive sudden eruption

where you have these very active steam systems close to the surface.

It's a beautiful day.

On top of being excited about a great day out,

you know, we're, uh...

You know, the weather's looking great.

So we arrive, head to the White Island Tours offices

where we signed ourselves in,

and then we just made our way down to the wharf side.

On our boat was around about 30 people

from different countries on holiday,

just chatting, waiting to board the boat.

Boat is moving quite fast,

the sea's not smooth.

It's an hour and a quarter to get out there.

So I'm Mark Inman, Hayden's, uh, older brother.

So on the day, Hayden was one of the, um, lead guides.

He's the most experienced guy on the island.

I guess my father actually introduced Hayden to the island,

He was a guide for a little while there,

did a number of years guiding.

And had his passion for the ocean and marine life,

and that sort of led him that direction.

His passion for the island was probably the biggest one.

For him, it was the ultimate job.

I had no idea what the time was, so I'd kept checking in with Dad,

and then they started to come around with life jackets and gas masks.

So I realised we must be getting pretty close,

and almost instantly after that, we turned around,

and it was like, wow, we're here.

So about 100m out, the boat anchors and launches an inflatable,

and then we were just transferred over to the island.

I was the first one up the ladder and ran,

cos I wanted to be the first on the island.

The first to get a look,

the first to, like, smell the sulphur.

Whakaari is a classic cone volcano.

If you were asked as a kid at school to draw a volcano,

this is the kind of volcano you'd draw.

It's actually a really large volcano,

it starts on the sea bed, and the vast majority of it is underwater.

There were gigantic sulphur crystals, fumaroles.

It was everything I ever could have wished for.

The landscape is whites, greys, bright yellows, um,

pockets of steam popping out, uh, big boulders.

So quite a kind of a lunar feel to it,

but very active. Uh, yeah.

The crater lake was breath-taking.

At no point did I think there was any danger.

It was so interesting exploring all the different rocks.

It looks like it was similar to most other days,

where you would hear rushing of gas and steam out of vents,

and you would maybe see some bubbling or movement

in the hot water in the crater area.

I'm not aware of time passing.

We're having great fun, you know, it was an awesome tour.

Lots of questions with the tour guides

that were able to talk about different aspects of the island.

So we got back on the boat,

and the skipper took us around to the next bay

so we can get the last look at the crater lake.

And from that next bay you can see directly up to the crater.

And that was... we went around there for a last photo opportunity.

And the skipper pointed out, and we could see in our photos,

that the other tour was on the island

up on the crater lake.

And my last photo there was seven minutes past two.

The boat kind of pulled away,

and we started to head back to Whakatane

when I kind of heard commotion at the back of the boat.

I was just aware of a commotion amongst other people on the deck

that just made me turn around.

There was... There was...

I didn't hear anything other than other people being...

reacting to something.

I was at work at the um, Top 10 Holiday Park.

I can vividly recall we were on base.

Um, I was supposed to be running an education session at the base.

I was at a meeting or something.

I was sitting at my desk in my office. Yep.

I was at an ambulance dedication.

And I was working here, uh, doing the foundations on this house.

I was having a normal day at work.

I was actually in Rotorua.

At that moment, instantly knew it was an eruption.

DEEP BOOM

PANICKED VOICES

MAN: Go, go, go, go, go!

Go inside! Go inside!

So I do remember the day cos, yeah, it is my birthday.

I was having a normal day at work.

I had been out to White Island once that morning

and got off the island at 12.30.

I got a phone call from, um, one of our pilots.

I walked to the hangar doors and could see it.

Um, I practically hung up on him.

Yeah.

So on the day of the eruption,

I was, uh, working here, uh, doing the foundations on this house.

I kind of climbed up out of the bank and had a look out to see,

and could see a big ash plume out there.

And, uh, just decided at that time

that I was gonna be more helpful out at the hangar

than what I was here.

I had seen a couple of tour boats go out in the morning that day,

so I had an idea that some people were out there,

but just hoping that no-one was actually on the island

when it happened.

So I dropped the old tool belt and jumped in the truck

and booted it down there as fast as I could.

Yes, I got on the phone to Mark Law, um, my boss here at Kahu.

Mark Law's the CEO and chief pilot of Kahu Helicopters.

He's a great boss, and, uh, just a real strong leader.

By the time I got to the hangar,

Jason Hill had got the helicopters ready with Mark

and grabbed our protective gear, gas masks,

first aid kit, water,

um, filled it all up in a bag and jumped in the heli

and booted it out to White Island.

After any eruption,

you've got a destabilisation in the system,

a big stress and energy change,

so there is a real chance of another eruption.

DEEP BOOM

At Whakaari, it appeared to be a steam eruption.

The thing with steam eruptions

is you don't see anything immediately beforehand,

you just have a sudden tipping point

and there's an explosion and an eruption,

and that's quite common.

Whakaari/White Island is a large cone volcano

surrounded by seawater,

which makes it a relatively small island.

Deep down inside the volcano, about a kilometre depth,

you have an area where magma is heating up the ground water

and leading that up towards the Earth's surface.

That hot water and steam system is sitting there, pressurised,

and then suddenly you've got this tipping point where it explodes.

And you would have had straight away a jet of ash

and hot water and steam coming straight up into the air,

and that steam and ash would have been able to expand out

as a pyroclastic flow across the ground towards the ocean.

Because you had an explosion at the vent,

you would have also had some flying rocks coming through the air.

After a minute or two, the eruption's over,

but the wind continues to blow the ash downwind

for tens of minutes or longer, even after the eruptions happened.

GEOFF: We're watching the eruption from the back of the boat.

There was no lava, it was just ash.

I could see this plume of, uh,

black and grey and white

just towering above the island.

My first reaction was, "Wow, I can't believe

"we get to be so close to seeing this happen."

I'd never seen anything so magnificent before,

but seconds later, it turned so much more sinister.

It started rolling over the rocks towards us.

At that moment, we were rushed back into the boat.

We ushered everybody back in. I was the last in.

Wanted to make sure there was nobody outside.

Shut the door.

From inside the cabin,

the windows that just looked out of the side of the boat,

uh, at that stage, the entire island was engulfed.

You couldn't see any land mass at all.

ONLOOKER: Jesus.

It was a dark grey cloud of ash.

ONLOOKER: Oh, my God.

We knew that there were people still on the island,

and I think there was a realisation at that stage

that people still on the island were now engulfed in that ash.

WOMAN: That's terrifying.

When we first got reports of an eruption...

..I can vividly recall we were on base,

and the first thing that went through our mind

was that this will be a false alarm.

My name is Tony Smith.

I'm one of the HEMS doctors

with the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust,

and I'm also the medical director for St John in New Zealand.

Call came in around half past two in the afternoon,

and we all assembled in the ops room,

and at first, it was a bit hard to believe.

Um, they said, "Hey, White Island has erupted."

Basically, both the machines were airborne in under ten minutes

on the way to Whakatane.

In the few minutes that it took us to get back to the bay

that we'd been anchored at,

the ash cloud has now fallen, and the island is visible.

The sun is now shining on the island and it's a perfect shade of grey.

What was whites, yellows, reds

is now just a single monotone grey.

The second group that were on the island,

their boat, which was anchored where we were when we left,

was completely covered in grey like someone had spray painted it.

One thing that I guess

maybe drew my attention

to the severity of what had just happened was, uh,

one of the helicopters that had landed on a wooden deck with a group

of three or four people.

This helicopter,

not only its blades were all snapped and angled down,

but the helicopter had been pushed back off this deck.

This wasn't just an ash cloud that rolled.

There was a force that could push a helicopter off where it sat

and to break the rotors.

That's when you start to realise that-that there's gonna be injuries.

MAN: Whakatane coastguard, copy?

So I saw people along the rocks and along the shore...

..and people all waiting at the end of the jetty.

An odd dinghy went and pulled people out of the water

and brought them back onto our boat.

One of the crew went to a cupboard and grabbed some first aid kits.

I asked if there was anything I could do to help,

and at that stage, she had a look of horror on her face

and she said,

"We can do with all the help we can get."

I was sitting in my office,

and one of my staff members walked in my door

and said that he'd just been dispatched to Whakatane

because Whakaari had erupted.

I'm Leisa Tocknell,

I'm the Territory Manager for Lakes for St John Ambulance Service.

I rang comms and said that I'm going to start organising people

to get the command unit across from all aspects of St John,

110 people involved, so it was a big event.

The people just kept coming, there was a constant flow,

each dinghy bringing more and more people.

At that point I thought it was just eye washes,

and I was trained in first aid with children,

so I assumed it would be easy.

Um, grabbed a first aid kit and ran out

and I had honestly never seen anything like it.

There was a range of burns, as far as I understand it.

Like, hot ash, um, to, like, blast injuries.

So hot air.

Um, and then obviously the sulphur dioxide burns itself.

My name's Reuben.

I'm with the clinical development team

in St John in the central region.

Often, there's different layers of the skin that are affected,

and sometimes it can be just superficial, like sunburn.

And sometimes it can be, um, quite deep

where all the layers of the skin are literally destroyed.

I've seen burns before and blisters, but nothing like this.

It covered their whole bodies.

People's skin looked like it was just falling off.

With burns, the first first aid is always, you know,

active cooling. So, um, cool running water.

Obviously, there was a considerable lack of that.

When we poured the fresh water on their skin directly,

it caused more damage,

so it was covering them in a piece of clothing

to then pour the water on them to provide that damp surface.

But there just wasn't enough

for everyone to have the water that they needed.

They just went from, uh, needing cooling on the burns

to suddenly going very, very cold and then going into shock.

Everyone was just giving every piece of clothing they could

to help keep these people warm.

We were gonna head back to Whakatane,

which we knew was gonna be a good hour and a bit, hour and a quarter.

It was a mix of noises in the back of the whirring of the boat

and people screaming,

and I just started humming a song more for my own,

I guess, peace of mind.

And then one of the guys that I sat with grabbed my ankle

when I stopped humming, um, and he said to keep going.

So then I started quietly singing, um, a song just to them

to give them, I guess, a sense of hope and joy.

Um, better than sounds of people screaming in pain.

When people were saying, "I'm not gonna make it",

we were like, "Yes you are, because you've got a lifetime ahead of you

"and it's not gonna finish today. This is not your last day."

The rescue helicopters had been diverted to Whakatane,

um, so they weren't actually coming.

So it was at that stage, Mark made the call.

It was up to us to get the people off the island.

We knew there'd been a significant event

and you decided to make the call and head on out.

Me and Mark Law flew a helicopter each,

and I also had Tom Storey, um, on board with me.

All the way out there,

we didn't know if anyone was on the island at the time

or if anyone was injured,

we were just going out there to help

if anyone had, or hopefully find no-one...

no-one had been on the island.

But um, unfortunately that didn't happen.

Passing the boat on the way out,

White Island Tours boat there was coming back.

Um, we noticed that there was quite a number of injured people

on the boat,

so we looked for a way of assisting them,

um, and at that time, Mark, um, overtook me

and made it to the island,

and he said our assistance was needed on the island

as there was multiple victims still on the island.

Uh, that's kind of when the old shell hit that, yeah,

this has happened and there is people on the island.

So we kind of just, um, braced ourselves

for what we were gonna come across.

The whole landscape had changed

from a nice, rocky, colourful... to just a grey mat of ash.

90% of the helipad was covered in ash,

but you could still make out where they were.

Um, so Mark landed on the first helipad,

and we landed on the helipad behind the volcanic helicopter

that got blown off.

Obviously, we were hit pretty quickly by the gases.

We got out, um, got our gas masks on,

I got the bag with the first aid kit and stuff,

and we ran over and met Mark.

He kind of met us in the middle.

Mark Law, he actually came over to me and Tom

and then told us what was going on

and what we were about to, um, witness.

Where the people were and what the plan was at that point,

which was to go there, reassure people we were there,

reassure that help was on the way,

and we're gonna get them off the island.

At that stage, we were under the understanding that

the air ambulance crews were coming out.

En route to the job,

there was lots of radio chatter going on.

There were lots of sort of fragments of information coming in.

Didn't quite know what to expect as we were flying down there

because it's one of those unusual kind of jobs.

It's about a 40, 50-minute flight.

So there's a lot of discussion about what we can do,

what we may encounter.

And as we went down, we got more and more information,

and it became very clear about halfway there,

we were heading into a very major incident.

And then as we got closer, yeah,

we saw just a big plume of smoke from White Island.

So yeah, we knew we were in for a long day.

The volcano was still fairly active, um, still spewing ash,

and, uh, every now and then, it had let off a bit of a blast.

Nothing like the first eruption,

but, um, it did get quite dark out there for a little bit,

and rained quite heavy ash on us for a bit.

When we started walking closer to the crater

and, uh, kinda up to... half up to your knees in ash.

So kind of like walking through talcum powder.

It was a little bit nerve-racking.

I wouldn't say it was a nice feeling,

but we were there to help...

..people so, you know, but of the least of the worries I felt, yeah.

Um, first person we come across was deceased,

and we just moved on till we had a group of survivors.

They were all burnt quite significantly.

Uh, probably 90% of the people couldn't talk to you.

Um, something like concussion would be, uh, a lot of them couldn't move.

Just a lot of moaning and crying and calling out,

calling out for help.

Um, so we just let them know that we were there to help them,

and, uh, yeah, we'd be helping to get them off the island.

I offered them water, put gas masks on...

on who we could, um,

and just tried to make them as comfortable as they could be

before help could arrive.

So at that point, we were still expecting, um,

rescue helicopters to turn up.

Um... as you do in an event like that.

We were tasked initially to fly to Whakatane Airfield.

Our tasking agency preferred we'd go to Whakatane,

get a... get a tasking from there and go from that point.

It's normally our first thing is who's in charge

and what do they want us to do, first of all.

You can't just do your own thing.

Um, you need to follow a chain of command

just to make sure that things are done in a sequential order.

We had crews here waiting for people to come off the boats.

Um, and obviously we had set up another second triage place

at the airport, um, where we were to receive

and, um, treat patients,

and act as a staging point to stabilise the patients

and get them to other hospitals who could accept them.

Due to us having hand-held radios and an aeroplane flying overhead,

John Fennell, um, he actually let us know

that the rescue, um, helicopters had been diverted to Whakatane.

Um, so they weren't actually coming.

So it was at that stage, Mark made the call,

it was up to us to get the people off the island.

So there was sort of a main cluster area.

They were all reasonably close together.

Yeah, we loaded the first group on.

You kind of grabbed the most responsive ones,

the ones you thought had the best chance of survival.

Um, that was pretty hard

going past people that you didn't think were gonna make it,

but it was a decision you had to make to try help who you can.

So we got five in Jason's helicopter.

I left the island, um, tracking for Whakatane hospital.

The victims that were in the machine,

you know, I was just yelling at them, trying to keep them awake,

keep their senses going...

..cos, yeah, I knew they were in a bad way.

Um, at that time, Tim Burrows had turned up from Volcanic Air

in one of his helicopters.

Um, so we loaded another five people and Mark's helicopter,

and he left for Whakatane.

And then we loaded another two people into Tim's helicopter,

and he left for Whakatane.

So you landed at the hospital,

they then started bringing beds out,

and you just pushed those beds up against the helicopter,

and it went about to lifting those people out one by one onto the beds,

and then they'd be gone.

HELICOPTER BLADES WHIR

Very soon after we arrived at Whakatane Airfield,

we briefly put in a bit of extra fuel,

reconfigured the back of the aircraft

so that we could fit as many patients in the back

of the aircraft as possible, and then we flew to the island.

A few of us manned the second Auckland chopper,

cos it was a more appropriate platform to take out to the island.

It's got more capacity to, um, get more patients out in a hurry.

We didn't really know what to expect.

We were thinking, "Do we have the right gear?"

"What are we gonna see and what are we gonna do?"

And also, "How are we going to best protect ourselves,

"once we're there?"

I stayed on the island for a bit.

When Mark left for Whakatane, he told me where Hayden was.

So I just made the effort to run down there

and just pulled him out of where he was

and just propped him up on the bank.

Mark had given me a job to do, and that's what I was focused on doing.

So I kind of went through every one I could, checking for signs of life.

Um, propped up people, made people as comfortable as I could.

Um, in their kind of final moments.

If there was a cell phone nearby or a lanyard or something,

I'd just put it in their hand or in their pocket

or over their neck.

There was a couple that had still had a pulse

but were unresponsive.

So just kind of sat with them until they passed away,

hm, and then carried on.

As we approached the island,

we could see a massive plume of smoke

and a yellow stain for around about 1.5km out to sea.

Approaching the island was, uh, quite confronting.

One side of the island was still quite green and lush,

and the affected side of the island was just like a scene from the moon,

It was just covered in this fine grey ash.

The reports at that time

were that there were people still on the island who were alive.

So we were, um, hatching a bit of a plan.

We would leave, um, uh, the crewman, the doctor,

and a third ICP we had with us on the airframe.

And that if there was any patients,

we would simply bring the patients to them,

and they would start ferrying them back to the mainland. Yeah.

There's a couple of places you can land on the island.

I said if we could sort of just land right on the shoreline,

you know, as brief as possible, just do a land touch,

get the guys out and we'll back off.

We'll wait for the signal and let us know when to come back in

and what we're gonna pick up.

We picked a spot to land close to the edge of the water

and deployed both of our intensive care paramedics.

As soon as I opened the door, we could feel it,

it was pretty hard to breathe.

Once we got out, uh, the machine took off,

so there was just ash and dust and fumes all around us.

And every exposed bit of skin was just stinging.

It was a far more hostile environment, obviously,

um, after it's just erupted.

The rotors were pushing up so much ash

that it was almost impossible to see and almost impossible to breathe.

And I thought for a minute,

"Oh, gosh, we can't actually stay on the island

"because we just can't breathe."

There was a strong sulphur smell,

there was a strong acid feeling in the air.

Our eyes were streaming and were very sore

just from the contact with the air.

But once the helicopter cleared and the dust and ash settled,

it was bad, but it was better.

And that's when somebody just turned up out of the blue

with a bucket of, uh, masks, respirators that were fantastic.

'He gave us one each.' I didn't even see them land.

Um, I just kind of come across the beach and saw a paramedic there,

and, um, just offered him some gas masks and, yeah...

And being able to breathe was just, uh, it was like,

"OK, we can stay here, and we can do what we need to do."

Um, so that was, uh, it was awesome. He was... Yeah.

He just turned up out of nowhere. It was kind of...

It was surreal as well, you know.

He was just on his own initially.

And we were going, "Oh...", you know, "..are you OK?"

And he says, "Yep, we've just been scouring the island"

and, um, he looked like he'd seen quite a bit of stuff.

Um. And we still were unsure who they were.

And it wasn't until a little bit later that we realised

they were non-emergency personnel.

Um, and they'd done an amazing job.

They told us what they had done and, um...

Yeah, just heroes.

I was in awe at what they had achieved.

I left the hospital and came back to Whakatane Airport, to our base.

All the rescue machines were parked outside our hangar here,

and at that point, I actually got told to stand down.

Um... but I refused to.

Yeah, there was no way I wasn't going back out to the island...

..because I knew there was more people, and Tom was on the island.

So, yeah, I told him I was going and in the end,

um, he just said, "Do what you want."

And I said, "Yeah, I am."

Dr Tony Smith had had a chat to the guys

just prior to me getting there.

He had indicated to me that he very much doubted

whether there was anybody left on the island that had survived,

but we just needed to stay there for a bit longer

to get a more formal picture,

um, and a better understanding of exactly the numbers

that had come and gone. Yeah.

As it turned out, when we arrived on the island,

all of the patients who were alive had already been rescued,

so we then went and checked on the people that they had found.

I just knew where there were eight bodies that, um, had passed away.

And I told him that.

We established that there were no survivors.

And then we realised, well, there's no point in us being here.

A, we're probably required back on the mainland.

And B, at that point it was a job for the police.

So we asked the non-emergency personnel to vacate first,

and then we called in a helicopter to get us out of there.

Well, it wasn't long after, um, Tim and that left that, uh, volcanic...

another volcanic helicopter had turned up

with a couple of other guys on it that had come to pick me up.

So as we were taking off, I heard Jase on the radio,

who was halfway out to get me

and told him that I was on my way back in another heli.

Not knowing that, you know, we wouldn't be going back or anything,

I turned around and came back to the airport,

Um, which was the only regret that I've got.

Um, because, yeah, we could have gone back out in there

and, um, pulled all eight, um, of the deceased off the island.

Yeah.

On the way back, every now and again,

I could just look up over the front of the boat

and I could just see land coming closer and closer,

and we went very quick up the river...

..and as we came in, there was a whole line of paramedics, police,

fire service all just waiting for this boat to arrive.

This was only just the beginning of what turned out to be

an incredibly long shift.

Obviously, significant burns to their skin and their flesh.

It was very deep burns,

and of course, the airway burns as well.

Um, and we also saw blast wounds as well,

cos obviously, when the eruption occurred,

there was a lot of debris in the air and they were hit with the debris.

So the initial patients in the emergency pre-hospital

and rescue phase, the keys are, trying to ensure

that they're as comfortable as they can be.

So providing really good pain relief to them.

When you're burnt, you lose a lot of fluid,

so trying to ensure that we're replacing that fluid through drips,

and then also thinking about how we look after

people's ability to breathe.

Tony initially went to the boat ramp.

There were multiple victims there,

and he got an idea of how many patients were there

and fed that back to the communication centre.

I sat at the airfield to run the air assets side of things.

There were a number of significantly burned patients at the wharf.

We assisted in the triage of those patients,

and we dispersed those patients from the wharf to Middlemore,

Waikato and Tauranga hospitals.

And then I was driven into Whakatane Hospital,

where we were expecting to find around about

a dozen badly burned patients, to find that we had nearly 30.

When we were dealing with, you know, multiple patients,

there's only so...

There's limited resources at Whakatane,

and you just don't want to overload, um, the local hospital.

The staff at Whakatane Hospital were doing a fantastic job

of treating those patients.

And then I took on the role of coordinating the transport

of those patients out of Whakatane Hospital

over the next approximately 12 hours.

So I actually joined the Hamilton crew

of an intensive care paramedic and climbed onto their aircraft,

and flew this first patient to Waikato Hospital.

And then my day kind of changed from picking up patients from the scene

or from the wharf to transferring patients

out of Whakatane Hospital to some of the major burn centres.

They got six home.

Winona and Hayden are still out there.

Tom and Mark both saw him in the stream that day.

Um, and he had passed.

So, uh, Tom actually pulled him out of the stream

and laid him on the side of the stream there against the rocks.

Yeah, Tom put Hayden in a position

where he did think he was just gonna be there, um,

when they went back to get him.

But, um, due to a thunderstorm that night -

had a substantial amount of rain

over the island, and, uh, that little creek actually rose

by probably nearly a metre.

I thought I'd put Hayden somewhere safe,

and to be told that he got washed out in the old rain

out to sea was, um, pretty hard to believe at first.

As hard as that was, or hard as that to hear,

it was pleasing or comforting to know that he was taken care of.

But looking back, I would... would have done things differently.

I would have stayed on the island and waited for Jase to come out,

and we would have loaded up the heli with more... more people

then got everyone off the island that afternoon.

Yeah, there's no doubt about it,

I would have just carried on going out,

and there wouldn't be two missing today if we'd done that, so...

Mate, they're heroes.

To take yourself out to an active volcano that's just had a cough...

..is incredibly brave, um, thankless and thoughtless.

You know, it's like for anyone to do that,

you're just forever grateful.

The only... The only difference, I guess,

would have been if they were allowed back one more time,

and the story would be different.

Hayden would have put everyone first and he would put himself last,

um, that was the type of bloke he was.

He always said if anything was to happen,

he'd be the last off the island.

I mean, he's a kaitiaki, so he cared for everyone

and made sure he looked after everyone.

The hardest thing is not hearing his laugh.

He had quite a unique, um, laugh.

But, you know, every time you hear it now, you miss it. Um.

Watching...

Watching my own two kids...

EXHALES SHAKILY

..without an uncle...

..it's been tough.

This was very psychologically challenging.

We are used to going to incidents where people are tragically injured

and tragically killed,

but we had never experienced anything like this.

And for the first time in my career,

I found myself deeply affected by this incident

for weeks and months afterwards.

For me, it was just the sheer volume of human tragedy.

It's a tragedy that's just... just keeps on taking.

I had days where I would break down in tears,

knowing that just because we got them back to professional care

didn't mean they were safe.

There's plenty of... plenty of people on the boat

that did a lot more than we did.

Um, just the immediate first aid

and knowing what to do for burn victims out on the boat,

which I think was a huge part in saving a lot of people's lives

on the boat.

Yeah. You see, uh, burn victims,

but this was... this was quite different.

Um, seeing people in pain is a terrible side of the job.

People that-that don't do this job at all were dealing with,

um, yeah, some horrific stuff.

And I really take my hat off to them.

They did a phenomenal job.

A year on, it's still quite surreal, but, um...

Yeah, I'm coping with it.

It's something that's happened.

So... Yeah.

I don't think that I would have done anything different

than anyone else put in that situation.

For me, I didn't do anything heroic,

I was just a person who was at that place and helped the best I could.

I'm amazed at how many people were involved in that day,

from the initial hero rescuers who flew out there,

who picked people up in boats

through to the helicopter trusts and the ambulance service

through to Whakatane Hospital, which did an amazing job.

It's a... It's not a big hospital.

It doesn't have huge numbers of staff,

and they looked after a phenomenal amount of sick patients on that day.

Through to their hospitals like Middlemore and Waikato and Tauranga,

that looked after the burn patients longer term,

through to the rehabilitation and ongoing care

that the patients have received.

It's phenomenal how many people were involved to try and save life

and make people better.

Oh, just kinda did what any other Kiwi would do,

we were just pretty lucky. We had the resources and ability

to go out there and help, and that's what we did.

The way everyone's sort of pulled together in Whakatane,

it's pretty cool just to see it all on the day

and afterwards, you know, it's pretty neat. Yeah.