After a nearly six-year saga, the Emergency Management Minister’s “cautiously optimistic” scientists will get back on Whakaari / White Island soon to fix broken technology.
They have previously been denied entry by the island’s owners, the Buttle family, to repair the gear after the 2019 eruption killed 22 people.
The monitoring equipment was drastically damaged and eventually stopped working.
Te Herenga Waka Victoria University researcher Dr Finn Illsley-Kemp told 1News: “We’re relying on seismometers that are on the mainland and they’re just too far away to record the signals.”
With the current limitations, when the island has erupted in bad weather or darkness, it hasn’t always been detected.
“Eruptions have occurred and we didn’t notice until we saw damage on solar panels,” Illsley-Kemp said.
“While Whakaari is erupting, it’s very strange to not be able to know anything about it.”
Normally our most active volcano has instruments showing shaking, gas levels, ash, sounds, GPS, temperatures, and multiple cameras around the crater, for experts watching 24/7 to help keep people in nearby boats, planes and the mainland safe from hazards like ashfall.
University of Auckland geology professor Phil Shane said with the current blackspots, “for most volcanic scientists, it’s quite frustrating”.
“It doesn’t really seem rational or logical to restrict access by scientists to volcanoes when it’s part of our role.”
One of the complications was court action involving the Buttle family, who were initially convicted of health and safety breaches which was then quashed.
Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell has been upping the urgency to now reinstate the technology.
“It’s something that is complicated, unfortunately, and I didn’t anticipate that it would be,” he told 1News.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to get equipment on there.”
The Buttles told 1News they met with government representatives in March from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Department of Internal Affairs.
“Going forward, the family wants to negotiate a formal licence, instead of the verbal licence that existed previously. They are waiting for further communication from the government on the proposed formal licence.”
They also said: “The Buttle family has always supported the activities of GNS [Science] in their monitoring and research on Whakaari.”
If approved, GNS Science would do the hands-on work to install the new gear.
