Some unknown number of tourists dead in New Zealand.
This was the caldera of…and I can’t stress this enough…New Zealand’s most active volcano. And cruise liners were dropping parties off at it :smack:
Tragic for those people, but it should never have been allowed in the first place. Those things wipe out groups of trained professionals. Day-trippers should just stay the hell away.
From the article:
So not safe enough for the rescue crews but the Prime Minister will go anyway…
Next week they’ll be voting to outlaw volcanoes.
You knew somebody was gonna say it.
It’s dangerous enough playing that the floor is lava…
Not just an active volcano, but one for which specific warnings of increased chance of eruption had recently been issued.
It would be interesting to know how much of that pertinent information had been made clear to the tourists.
There have been helicopters flying over to look for signs of life. The prime minister should be able to get her hands on a helicopter and fly by without being in danger.
New Zealand has always had awesome tourist trip ideas. Like in the late 1970’s when they thought it would be a grand idea to run tourist flights to Antarctica in a DC-10. Which was great, until they ran a plane at full speed into Mount Erebus, killing 257.
Should never have been allowed by the cruise line or the government? I am not a fan of outlawing behavior that puts your own life at risk. As long as:
Not everyone can be Tom Hanks.
For #1 I would say that it should be an informed decision. If the cruise line an gov. Say that it’s safe why should folks not believe them?
Do you tell people not to visit Old Faithful, too?
Me, I just don’t get out of bed in the morning.
But Tom Hanks seems to be everyone.
I suspect it would have been almost as bad to crash on Mt Erebus at half speed.
The government.
So, not a fan of seat belts or helmet laws, I take it. Well, there’s always some.
Eh. The volcano has had lots and lots of tourists and almost none of them have been killed, so the odds of being safe have been pretty good most of the time. It is almost like saying never live in the US Midwest because for a few minutes every number of years any one spot might be hit by a FU tornado.
I do both (well, either/or, depending upon vehicle) but I do because it’s a smart idea & not because the government mandates it. I look at the risk & those aren’t ones worth taking.
Now if it was going to be my only time in NZ & the only chance I’d get to see some spectacular scenery I might be willing to impart some risk if I was made aware of it. Generally, cruise-operated tours are safe (barring a rare accident). Were the participants, who may have booked their excursions months ago, made aware of the recent geologic activity?
The increased-alert status should have had some effect in limiting tourist activity, if it was condition 4 out of 5 and 5 is actually erupting.
Frankly I believe the cruise ship people would fully understand a cancellation for that reason. Roasted by pyroclastic flow has got to be a nasty way to go.
Here’s rooting for the medical teams working on the injured.
New Zealand doesn’t offer those flights anymore from what I can gather from a brief Google search, but their Aussie neighbors still do. You can take a flight like that on Qantas, departing from Melbourne. Technically the flight is chartered by a third party tour operator; it isn’t marketed by Qantas itself as far as I can tell.