Only tourists? They’re expendable. And probably insured. Do their policies exclude “death whilst ignoring warnings”?
I’ve heard both that the threat ranking was “2”, which is low, or that it was “4”, which is high risk. I don’t know which is correct. I suspect it was “4”, since reports also mention that the volcano had been increasingly active in the last few weeks.
If the threat rating was 4, they shouldn’t have gone at all. If for some reason, the tour company/cruise ship decided that they would stop, the risk should have been disclosed.
It seems the threat level is an “aftercast”.
The White Island bulletins are listed here, https://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/vab/all.
From that you can see that the alert level fluctuated between 1 and 2 for months or more (I stopped looking) and was only raised to level 4 after the eruption.
These people are from Australia, where it seems everything from the animals to the plants to the rocks seems to be poisonous, venomous, or otherwise trying to kill you?
I think “failure to read” is likely here. Having done some dangerous stuff in my life, some of which required signing waivers (and more that probably should have required waivers) I think most people sign without reading. I’m the oddball that will actually stand there and read stuff. Once had someone ask me what the placard on a small Cessna meant by “severe injury or death”. Seriously? It means by getting in this thing there is a risk of something going horribly wrong with the end result that you could be maimed or killed. So maybe not “failure to read” sometimes but “problems comprehending”.
Our modern civilization has done much to make daily life safer than ever before, and I think sometimes the result is that people have lost a certain sense of caution our forebears, by necessity, had. There are entire books about people doing dumb stuff in national parks, around cliffs or wild animals or other hazards, ignoring even explicit warning signs.
I have no problems with allowing tourists to visit a place like White Island as long as they are fully informed of the risks. I guess my question is… were they actually fully informed? Which is followed by how do you define “fully informed” for such an activity?
If you put lots of warning signs around the place, people get desensitised to them. I wonder if, instead of signs, they should have a little factual story about the most recent accident that prompted the sign.
E.g., “November the 4th, 2017, Mary-Jane Gilmour crossed this fence and stood on the cliff edge to pose for a photo for her boyfriend. She lost her footing and plummeted to the valley below. Her death was not instant and her screams could be heard for several minutes before they eventually subsided.”
On the other hand, if a relevant story can’t be found, maybe the sign shouldn’t be there.
Given how people respond to visual stimuli, a video of either the most recent or one of the more horrible accidents on continual loop might work better. Or maybe not, because there’s that certain type of person who will spend so much time watching video they’ll walk into an open manhole on the street.
I don’t want to say every tourist killed by a local/natural hazard is stupid or foolish because even the most informed, expert, and well prepared person can be harmed or killed by such hazards. But certainly some are. And I think some are people so used to safety features in modern civilized life that the real hazards of a wild place just doesn’t sink in well.
As I understand it, that was more-or-less the position of the NZ government up until now. They have a significant adventure tourism industry, and the adventure tourism industry is protected by the same kind of legislation that protects airline operators.
Active volcanoes are, by there very nature, geologically unstable. The rock that makes up the volcano will have lots of cracks, some of which will act as vents and release hot gases including steam and sulfur dioxide. This can come in bursts and the gas can be scalding. If the vent is covered in mud, then you can get mud bursts - basically sprays of scalding liquid. This can happen all over the volcano, not just in the crater. What’s more, it doesn’t take much to turn a non-venting crack into a vent. A small tremor, erosion, or even rainfall can change the path by which gas rises to the surface. So even if an active volcano isn’t erupting, you can still get burnt if you’re unlucky.
Also, tourists like to feel the heat of the volcano. Some crack might be a vent that’s slowly releasing hot gases so the rock itself is hot. It’s cool to stick your hand in the crack and feel the heat. However, there’s no visual cue indicating just how hot the rock is. So someone might think a rock is only slightly hot, put their hand on it, and discover that the rock was actually really hot and their hand is now burnt.
I’m sure there were also the usual range of injuries that occur when tourists are hiking on a steep path with loose rock and have a clumsy moment.
The warning signs on the Bright Angel Trail are pretty blunt. There’s another I can’t find showing a photo of a smiling guy in running shorts and a number that says something like, "Think you’re fit enough to hike down and back in one day? This guy ran the Boston Marathon and he died.
Example: Trying to put your kid atop a bison in Yellowstone Park for a photo-op.
Oh, yeah - I have a copy of the book Death in Yellowstone with a fair number of death-via-stupidly-ignoring-warnings. Come to think of it, I think there are a few threads on this site discussing such events.
When we visited Volcano National Park, a couple of people told us about a recent death from some guy who slipped and fell into a steam vent (and cooked.) I don’t know exactly where that happened, but we saw a likely place without an explicit sign. Just a little chain barrier (that would have been easy to step over) warning you how far back to stand.
Not a he, but a she. This page (the host for the photo) does a quick and dirty summary. The LA Times also did a story on the incident: Running dry.
I think perhaps some of the tourists involved in this tragedy were unaware of how fast an erupting volcano can kill people. I’m seeing reports that forensic techniques have been needed to identify some of the dead, some really nasty stuff about injuries, and it’s clear that even if you were on the beach you might not have been safe - a couple people apparently avoided significant injury by completely immersing themselves in the ocean, but that only works if your timing is good (which will be somewhat down to luck) and you can hold your breath long enough.
Apparently a family of four that used to live in the Chicago area that had moved to Australia was wiped out. The two sons are confirmed dead, their parents are missing and presumed dead (which is probably a pretty good assumption). Just more proof it’s a small world these days, I guess.
Broomstick: what I think is that most people assume is that with modern science there will be advance warning–as with weather forecasting.
I would never ride a motorcycle without wearing a helmet, that would be crazy, but I disagree with laws requiring helmet use by adults. In fact, I supported ABATE of Pennsylvania and helped them encourage PA to change their helmet law, which they did in 2003. As expected, fewer Pennsylvanians wear helmets and more deaths occur as a result.
Similarly, when laws in my area were first introduced to make smoking in bars illegal, I helped a bar-owning friend fight the law. Once the law was rescinded and people were once again allowed to smoke in his bar, he made his bar non-smoking voluntarily.
There was a guy a few years back who walked off the designated boardwalk near a hot spring in Yellowstone, fell into the hot spring, and died.
Yikes! Yes it’s been years since I’ve been to Yellowstone but I do remember those boardwalks over the steaming hot springs. My wife and I hope to go there in the near future.
But that article gave me a scare because my wife almost fell from a similar boardwalk. She just lost her balance (and she also has some vision challenges). I was too far away but I saw it happen — from 20 yards away she started waving her arms in circles in an attempt to regain her balance. She succeeded, but it was close. I felt helpless, so close but yet too far to help.
This was around shallow lakes so the water was cool/cold. Not hot springs. But still, very similar.
Thanks for that article. It’s a good scare as I read it now but I’m making strong mental notes for if (when!) we go to Yellowstone.
I am amazed at how a lot of people stepped up to save the victims. While the official government position was that it was too dangerous for rescue workers, several of the helicopter and boat pilots voluntarily went back to get victims. Now it may have been foolish, since if there was another eruption they might have all died, but their actions helped save lives. I suspect that most of the survivors owe their lives to these volunteers. In a time when my country has made me cynical, I like to think of all the people who pitched in, like those on the boat that had just left that turned around to pick up survivors.
And yet people complain about the inaccuracy of the weather forecasts all the time… 
You are correct - I think many people think we have a much greater ability to predict eruptions than we actually do.
At least they died while doing something they loved.