Yesterday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called for a minute’s silence exactly one week after the eruption at 2.11pm on Monday to honour the victims.
“Wherever you are in New Zealand, or around the world, this is a moment we can stand alongside those who have lost loved ones in this extraordinary tragedy,” Ms Ardern said.
“Together we can express our sorrow for those who have died and been hurt, and our support for their grieving families and friends.”
But even as she led the mourning volcano experts at a conference in California were shaking their heads at the country allowing tourists to visit an active, privately owned volcano with the decision on whether it was safe or not left in the hands of the tour operator.
“The alert levels are sort of advisory. You can’t put the responsibility on the tour operators – they have mixed allegiances, they are a business,” volcanologist Dr Erik Klemetti from Denison University in Ohio said.
Dr Klemetti warned that taking tourists to White Island was the “perfect cocktail” for tragedy in a 2012 article entitled How Dangerous is Visiting New Zealand’s White Island?
“You are literally putting your lives in the hands of tour operators when you make the visit.
“Will it take half a dozen deaths at White Island to change the culture, or is that merely the cost of being adventurous?” he wrote in the article published in the American magazine Wired.
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By making the visits to the White Island crater seem routine, it can lull the tour operators and tourists into a false sense of security.”Jacinta may have to accept! whats happened is unacceptable.....the blame has to remain with the govt of the day.....
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