White Island, Bay of Plenty

Okay, most of you will not have heard of this place, except for those of us in New Zealand and Aussie.

It is a Volcano located about 50 kilometers along the fault line in the Pacific Ring of Fire out from the towns of Whakatane and Tauranga. It is almost directly in a straight line out from Mts Ruapehu, Tongariro, & Ngauruhoe, and on through Rotorua, out through White Island and on to Raul Island in the Kermadecs.

Today, new Zealand time, it had a "mild" eruption while there was a tourist party from an ocean liner exploring it. At least 1 person was fatally injured, with perhaps several others as well, as they are several unaccounted for. It is of course, big news down-under.

I would like to offer my condolences to the families of those who were in harms way.

But I have to ask, when there has been warnings about the very likelihood of this island erupting, and it is the most active of all of New Zealand's volcano's, why the hell did some stupid person on the ship think of allowing anyone onto the damned island? Surely that Cruise Ship's crew should be held accountable for stupid decisions? It has always been an extremely dangerous place to visit, and has erupted on countless times in the last couple of decades. Even the atmosphere on it is extremely toxic and corrosive with sulfurous gasses.

The only people who should be allowed should be geological scientists and volcanologists.

 

Okay. The latest is that here have been a total 5 known deaths, with at least 8 more still m missing.
New Zealand Police are going to start a Criminal Investigation into this situation, which I firmly believe should happen. If it is found that one of these tourist organisations, or the shipping line is the one that allowed and organised the tourists to visit the very active volcanic island, then they should be held to account to the fullest possible under the laws of New Zealand. Tourist companies and these overseas shipping/cruuise lines cannot be allowed to just go willy-nilly and do as they please. The have to be made accountable for their actions.

 

just dumb, but what can you do? people love to do dangerous/thrillseeking stuff.

 

I think it’s more that we’ve “cushioned” society from harm. Workplace Health & Safety has removed so much risk from everyday life (to cater for the lowest common denominator) that it’s easy to become complacent about real risk.

previous generations saw risk and mortality with a lot more immediacy than current ones, and employed common sense to mitigate risk more frequently.

 

I would think that any stop or land excursion a ship wants to make has been approved by the country or city. A ship just can't pull up anywhere they want. They would make a request to various land authorities.

If they didn't, then that's pretty stupid.

 

Common sense would have prevented all these deaths, unfortunately common sense is very thin
on the ground, rubber necking idiots are everywhere.