Jordan Dunn: Newstalk ZB reporter on the Whakaari-White Island coronial inquiry

An Auckland courtroom has seen confronting footage of tourists running for their lives during the 2019 eruption of Whakaari-White Island.

A coronial inquest is looking into the disaster that killed 22 people and injured 25 - almost all in tour groups.

Newstalk ZB reporter Jordan Dunn says this inquest will cover an 'extensive' list of factors.

"They're going to be looking at how emergency responders did actually respond, and who was actually in charge with that emergency response and who was supposed to be centring it and who was supposed to be focusing that communication." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right to the FACADI White Island Coronial Inquest. It started
today with first responders giving evidence about the eruption that
killed twenty two people and injured twenty five six years ago.
News Talk ZB journalist Jordan Dunn has been there.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
High Jordan, Hey, hey, hey you going.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I'm very well, thank you. Now, the emergency responders described
the event as overwhelming. Were they prepared for what hit them?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, well you're right, Well the sounds of it not really.
They all gave different evidence. So there was Saint John
who gave evidence, there was the police, and they were
also Health New Zealand and they all have a picture
that it was an entirely overwhelming experience. Now, Saint John's
talks about Fuckatsani Hospital which was not nearly equipped for
this to happen. In Health New Zealand said that it's

(00:41):
burn center went through a week's work. So I went
through a month's work in about a week and a
half year's working about a quarter of that time. Now,
police really focused on their statement on the difficulties with
communication and the cross agency communication at that time. Now
there was just to get people off the island and
that was just half the battle. This is what the
council and Apollot had to say.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
There were issues with resourting. There were simply not enough
ambulances there. Andre Honor. Will hear a police radio Paul
saying the botus ten minutes away. We've got one ambulance here.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
We need more, Jordan. One of the things that we
discussed a lot in the aftermath of the eruption was
whether the first responder should have gone to the island
immediate immediately after the eruption, which they didn't do. Has
this been addressed?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, Well, there's been so many issues that they've been
looking through, and you know, the list is extensive. What
they're going to be looking at, They're going to be
looking at how emergency responders did actually respond, and who
was actually in charge of that emergency response, and who
was supposed to be centering in it, who was going
to be focusing that communication. You know, as as you mentioned,
commercial pilots went and tried to rescue people on the island,

(01:49):
but official emergency responders did not. Now, Council assisting the
Cook Coroner, Christine Twyman, she actually laid out this question.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
Council assistant considers it important to stand who had authority
for and actually made the decision that led to no
official aircraft landing on Facarti until several hours after the eruption.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
And then we also heard from Detective Sergeant Simon Nolan
this afternoon. What did he have to say?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
So he's given a bit of a three D diagram
of for Carti and White Island at the moments before
leading up to the eruption, and he's used a collation
of videos and photos of the people actually on the
island and it's a really eerie thing to watch heither,
because you're seeing these videos of these people on the
boat going to the island and they seem excited, you know,

(02:35):
they're obviously excited to see this this natural one, to
see this live volcano. But then slowly you see the
footage of the actual moment that it erupts, and it's
incredibly confronting. You see this, what was this little white
wisp coming off the lake turning into this black smoke
billowing off and you hear their screams and the tour
guides yelling them to run, and it was an incredibly

(02:58):
tough watch and a specially who was for the public gallery.
As we know, there were friends and family in there,
and you could definitely see the tears of these people
as they had to watch this confronting thing with your
loved ones saying it firsthand.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Jordan, thanks very much, appreciate your time.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Mate.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
That's Jordan done. News Talk SeeDB Journalistic. For more from
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