Making the decision to start moving while volcano victims’ screams were getting quieter around him still haunts Jesse Langford.
Langford has given evidence via a pre-recorded interview in the ongoing Auckland District Court health and safety trial where three individuals and three tourism companies are facing a number of charges in the wake of the 2019 Whakaari White Island tragedy.
His story, his evidence, are of survival and tragic loss.
"It still bothers me the decision to get up and walk away. It was a very difficult decision to make so I pretty much just said my goodbyes the best I could and got up and started walking."
Langford’s White Island Tour group was 21 strong, including two tour guides. His mother Kristine, 46, father Anthony, 51 and his sister Winona, 17, just two years younger than him, were also in the group.
As the island spewed ash, gas and massive rocks his group was taking photos, unclear initially that it was an eruption. Langford, who was 19 at the time of the eruption, said it was like something out of a Harry Potter movie and looked like black fireworks going off. But as the intensity of it increased, he remembered running and being hit by that wall of black.
“(My) instinct was to look, to get behind something, any source of protection. I saw that mound and I was beelining for that as I was hit by the wall. I landed on someone who was female, unsure who it was.
“She was just yelling at me to get off her - 'get off me, get off me' - and I was just getting hammered by this wall. It was like a sandstorm in the movies.”
That initial blast lasted a few minutes and when it cleared he saw his parents.
“I could see my parents, to my left my dad was sitting up struggling to breathe, trying to rip off the gas mask and then my mum wasn't moving at all.”
He said there was a lot of screaming but over time it got quieter and quieter. It may have lasted 15 to 20 minutes.
'What's going to happen to me?'
“A lot of terrible sounds that I wouldn’t want to hear again."
He started to look inwards.
“What’s going to happen to me?
“I made the decision that I couldn’t physically help anyone myself, but I thought I could help by walking out and telling people [that people] were still alive.
“No one else was moving around at this point… the screaming was starting to deter and starting to get quieter, there was less and less sound."
He walked out along riverbeds because he’d listened to an earlier safety briefing which had mentioned that was the most secure footing on New Zealand’s most active volcano.
Langford was the only member of his family to survive, with Winona's body never being found.
The trial continues.
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