The brother of a Whakaari/White Island tour guide who died in the eruption is seeing the glass as half-full after raising $75,000 for charity in, technically, two days.
The Whakaari Hayden Marshall-Inman Memorial Golf Tournament is an annual golf tournament fundraiser to connect the community and give back.
In 2020, 130 golfers helped raise $32,000 for St John Eastern Bay.
The 2021 tournament, played this year due to Covid-related delays, raised $40,000 for the National Burns Service.
It was the brainchild of Mark Inman and his friend. Inman is the brother of tour guide Marshall-Inman, who was among the 22 people who died when Whakaari/White Island erupted on December 9, 2019. His body was never recovered.
Two eruption survivors are having a say about how the money will be spent, and want it to be used for more widely-spread education about major burns after their experiences in hospital.
Inman said his brother's giving nature was a big part of the motivation behind the fundraiser.
He said it was a chance to celebrate those still here, the memories of those who had died, and make a difference in times ahead.
"Quite often you get caught up in the negative side of things ... and that isn't going to make anything better or improve anything going forward."
The annual fundraiser is held on the closest Friday to December 9 at Ohope Beach Golf Links. The course has views out to Whakaari and the East Coast where Tīpene Maangi, who also died in the eruption, was from.
Inman said a lot of the community involved on the day of the eruption, like first responders and skippers, joined the event.
"It's rehabilitation for the community ... it's a great way to get together and check in on everyone."
Inman said many generous sponsors were key to the amount raised as everything was donated - a donated Tame Iti art piece raised $10,000.
Inman said there was a sense of community from the moment of the eruption, describing a nurse who went into a local supermarket on the day, grabbed all the plastic cling wrap and ran out, saying she would pay for it later.
"We're lucky in the support everyone keeps giving ... That's part of why we do the event. To remind us of how lucky we are to live where we live."
The next golf fundraiser will be on December 9 and raise money for the local fire department.
There were 47 people on the volcano when it erupted. Most were international tourists.
Survivor Kelsey Waghorn, who was a tour guide that day, said it was "really humbling" to see the fundraiser's success.
"To be able to give it to the people that kept us alive, who were there when we cried and screamed in pain, and left crying because we were upset - it's nice to be able to give back."
She had been a guide for five years, after joining for a summer job then falling in love with it.
She remembered thinking on the day of the eruption, "I'm not going to survive this.
"This was our absolute worst-case scenario. It was an eruption with a pyroclastic flow."
According to GeoNet, pyroclastic flows often travel at up to 200km/h, reach temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius, and are the "most destructive manifestations of volcanic activity".
Waghorn, who had burns to 45 per cent of her body, said education and training for younger staff about severe burns at a regional level, and education of district nurses were needed.
She was based in Hutt Hospital's burn unit and said younger staff hadn't seen burns of more than 30 per cent coverage.
She said she was doing well physically and believed she was waiting on one more surgery.
"Hopefully that's it, but I think I've said that for the last three surgeries."
Her friendship with fellow tour guide Jake Milbank had also strengthened during this time.
He suffered burns to 80 per cent of his body and was based in Middlemore Hospital's burn unit in Auckland for four months. He is now back doing things he loves like fishing and hunting.
They joked their friendship was "compulsory" as they were the only ones who could understand what the other was going through.
"It's nice to have each other because it does feel really isolating," Waghorn said.
The pair said moving back from their burns units was "very weird".
"Once you got home you really realised how much you couldn't do," Milbank said.
Things like showering, cutting food, tying a shoelace, and wrestling on the compression garments. It was a great day when they were no longer needed, he said.
In November 2020, WorkSafe announced it was laying charges against 13 organisations and individuals in relation to the eruption.
Waghorn said it made it difficult to move on.
"Every week it's in the news again ... it keeps stalling the recovery."
National Burns Service co-ordinator Tracey Perrett was "blown away" by the funds and said Waghorn and Milbank's input into how the money was spent was a priority.
She said it cost about $700 to send one person to a one-day emergency management severe burns course and the burn rehabilitation course cost about $400 per person.
"It will go a really long way ... We'll be able to train a lot of people from around the country."
Perrett said staff development and retention across the four regional burn units and every point of the patient's journey was important.
The regional burn units are based in Auckland's Middlemore Hospital, Waikato Hospital, Hutt Hospital and Christchurch Hospital.
She said education needed to start in small communities. Some emergency doctors may never see a big burn and the courses were to prepare them.
She said the service ran courses for first responders and hospital staff about the first 24 hours of burn care, and education for staff in communities that did not have as much exposure to big burns.
Perrett remembered the first phone call on the day of the eruption.
She was told people were coming in on boats and thought the burns may be minor. She was wrong.
She said Whakaari was a year's worth of work in a day and "there was a lot of holy molys".
Staff had done paper exercises about burns to this many people, and while they had an idea of what was needed, they had never seen anything like it.
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