A video recording of a survivor’s harrowing account of the Whakaari White Island disaster has been played in a coroner’s court, detailing the horrors of the eruption and how the teenager protected himself and sought help in theimmediate aftermath of the eruption.
The Coronial Inquest into the eruption which killed 22 people and injured 25 others in 2019 continues in Auckland, moving onto evidence from survivors and witnesses.
Australian Jesse Langford, whose parents and sister were killed in the disaster, was 19 at the time of the disaster and suffered burns to most of his body.
He is one of three survivors among the group of tourists closest to the crater at the time of the eruption.
A police interview with him five months after the tragedy was played to the court, with Langford bearing burn scars on his forehead and dressed in a compression suit that covered his torso, arms and fingers.
Langford said it never came into anyone’s mind that the volcano could erupt while they were on the island, and that there was no mention of any of the dangers on the booking information or at any point during the lead up to arriving on the island.
Still from a video shot from a tourist boat next to White Island just as the volcano erupted. Photo / Allessandro Kauffman
However, he said he thought it looked unnatural as soon as they had arrived on Whakaari.
“It was quite barren, and if anything just felt uncomfortable and eerie to be there,” he told police.
Langford said they were given helmets and gas masks, but were told the gas masks were only needed if the steam was getting too much.
He described the moments when the eruption began, hearing a “loud bang”, and seeing “black firework with a black tail”, followed by increasing intensity of the bangs before their guide yelled at them to run.
Langford said everyone was running and his first instinct was to look for something to hide behind, but before long he was thrown by the forces of the eruption.
He recalled being hit by steam and rocks after he tried to stand up and walk while enduring extreme pain – later deciding to crouch and shelter.
“I put my right hand over the back of my head to protect my head from any more rocks that could potentially come my way, curling up into the foetal position, and I pulled my shirt over my face as best as I could, I was already quite burned at that point anyway, and I was just trying to hold my breath for as long as I could,” he said.
Langford appeared emotional as he recounted the difficult decision to get up and walk away to seek help, after the worst of the eruption was over, leaving behind others.
He said he kept on walking, covered in ash and with skin hanging off his body, knowing that if he had stopped he would not have had the strength to walk again.
Langford was eventually helped on to a White Island Tours boat, where a coastguard and others talked to him and tried to assist.
However, he recalled that the coastguard told him he wasn’t medically trained.
