A young woman can still remember the "screaming and screaming and screaming" during an ambulance ride to hospital after White Island erupted in 2019.
Survivor Annie Lu shared her painful experience today as part of the WorkSafe charges being heard in Auckland District Court over the deadly 2019 Whakaari disaster, which killed 22.
The charges allege health and safety failures in the lead up to the December 9 blast. They do not relate to the eruption itself or the events that followed, including the rescue and recovery of victims.
In a video interview filmed in May 2020, Lu, who is from Australia, said she booked through the Royal Caribbean website and visited Whakaari White Island with her mum, who survived as well.
She stressed that the pair assumed they wouldn't be let onto the island if it was unsafe.
Before going there, she didn't know Whakaari had erupted in 2016, she later said in response to a question.
Asked about briefings and forms before the trip to Whakaari itself, Lu said: "We booked a trip to Hobbiton and it was the same sort of thing as it said for Hobbiton."
“"Level two really didn't mean anything to us."
Lu said she was in the first group when they reached the island, and they received a safety briefing "somewhere along the way", where they were given hard hats and gas masks but the masks were "optional" and meant to counter the strong "stink" of sulphur.
Lu repeatedly told the interviewer that it "stunk like no tomorrow".
She said that the island's status at volcanic alert level two was mentioned when they were already "well and truly" on the island, but "level two really didn't mean anything to us".
"They don't say if level 100 is the maximum, or if level 10 is the maximum," she said.
Alert level two means moderate to heightened volcanic unrest. Alert level three is a minor volcanic eruption.
Lu's mother decided to take one last photo on their way down from the crater, Lu said in the video interview, tearing up.
"All of a sudden she saw something black pop up and she was like, 'oh look at that'."
Lu said that Kelsey Waghorn, a tour guide, then turned around and screamed for the group to run.
"That was when the explosion happened," Lu said. "I remember thinking to myself, there is no way we're gonna outrun this, we're gonna have to find something to hide behind. I remember hearing mum scream my name and then everything just went dark.
"There was this big wind that just knocked us for six and just so much pain, it was just black."
She later compared it to a tornado, "except the eye of the tornado is not peaceful".
Asked about the pain, Lu began crying, saying it felt like being spiked all over with "iron-hot" needles.
"I remember screaming into the gas mask, the helmet was knocked off me."
When the ash cloud cleared, Lu and her mother ran to the wharf, where they saw people in the water.
"The only exit path really is the jetty," she said, adding that people's flight or flight instincts kicked in.
Lu climbed into the water "for a bit", to ease the pain, before the pair boarded a rubber boat and were taken to the Phoenix.
On the Phoenix, she "charged into the toilet" to wash her hands, described how they were "bubbling" and her nails were "splitting apart".
She kept trying to wash the sulphur off herself and said her mother was like a "stunned mullet", not really responding to anything.
After a time, as more people were brought to the boat, Lu started shaking when she realised she couldn't bend her legs.
“"There was this big wind that just knocked us for six and just so much pain, it was just black."
"My legs just won't work," she remembered telling someone on the Phoenix, describing the environment as "chaotic".
There was screaming and crying as people were wrapped in blankets, towels and foil sheets, she said.
People were given water to drink and pour on themselves but it was limited, Lu said.
She described lying down and watching the land get closer through a hole in the boat, talking with the people around her about how it would only be "five minutes" even though they knew they were "lying" to themselves.
By the time they reached the shore, some victims "weren't making any noise any more".
She went to hospital in an ambulance with another girl who was just "screaming and screaming and screaming in pain".
Asked if they were ever told what to do in case of emergency on the island, Lu's answer was simple: "No."
Six defendants will go on trial tomorrow, facing charges laid in the wake of the deadly 2019 eruption. (Source: 1News)
She said one of the younger guides was celebrating a birthday on the day of the eruption.
Asked what impact the eruption has had on her life, Lu said she had an operation on her hands just two weeks ago.
"I never expected me to become friends or so familiar with the hospital, medical staff," she said. "It's changed everything, basically."
As with yesterday's witnesses, ID Tours' defence lawyer David Neutze showed Lu brochures for Royal Caribbean cruises.
"It looked absolutely nothing like that on the website," Lu said. "It does not look like a blurb that we'd seen."
She did acknowledge reading that it was "New Zealand's most active volcano".
But she stressed they trusted the hosts to "make the right call" and cancel the trip if there was "an inkling" of an eruption.
Tauranga Tourism Services' defence lawyer Sarah Wroe acknowledged Lu's suffering, as Neutze had.
The lawyer for the island's owners did not ask any questions.
After the lawyers' questions, Judge Evangelos Thomas thanked Lu and offered his condolences for what she'd been through.
The case
Whakaari Management Limited and its directors Andrew, James and Peter Buttle, as well as ID Tours New Zealand Limited and Tauranga Tourism Services Limited, are the defendants in the judge-only trial. Judge-only means there is no jury.
Thirteen defendants were originally charged, nearly a year after the eruption.
NEMA had its charges dismissed in March, and was awarded costs of $40,000.
Inflite Charters, GNS Science, White Island Tours, Volcanic Air Safaris Limited, Aerius Limited and Kahu New Zealand Limited have entered guilty pleas. Inflite was ordered to pay $267,500 and the others are yet to be sentenced.
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