Hero pilot:
Every helicopter that flew someone off Whakaari/White Island in the wake of the volcanic eruption had someone die on board, says the pilot who took the last survivor off.
Tim Barrow, the director and chief pilot at Volcanic Air Safaris, spoke to Stuff at the firm’s base at Rotorua Airport yesterday about what he saw, and did, when he landed on the island at 3.40pm on Monday.
The journey to the island was one the 50-year-old had made thousands of times since the 1990s, but never like this day.
It all started with a call that an eruption had taken place.
‘‘I decided I needed to get closer to the action so I took one of my pilots with me, got airborne and out of Rotorua.’’
Barrow admits that the following events are something of a blur now, and happened quickly.
Contact from another pilot, John Funnell, who had set up an aerial observation platform above the island in a fixed-wing aircraft, and messages from rescuers already on the ground convinced him it was safe to land.
‘‘When we landed I was in communication with Mark Law [a fellow helicopter pilot from Whakata¯ne]. I landed close to where one of his machines was. To be honest it’s all a bit of a blur,’’ he said.
He said Law and his team then directed him towards one of the wounded. Then with Hoppy (Graeme Hopcroft, Barrow’s fellow pilot) they helped that person back to their helicopter.
‘‘We both went back and helped assist again where there were multiple casualties.’’
Barrow said they helped five survivors onto Law’s aircraft, then another five onto a second chopper. ‘‘At that location there was only one remaining survivor,’’ he said.
‘‘We got that person on board the aircraft and that was the last survivor from the eruption.
‘‘I then departed the volcano with Hoppy and these two survivors. They were in a bad way and one passed away on the flight back. In fact, all aircraft had one pass away to the best of my knowledge.’’
Asked about the state of the people he helped, Barrow baulks about going into detail. ‘‘I don’t want to go too far into that.’’
He agreed, however, that they were all very badly injured.
The last helicopter to take off did one last sweep of the crater. ‘‘There were no more survivors.’’
Regarding the surviving person he rescued from the island, he admits he has no idea of their whereabouts, or status, now.
‘‘I don’t even know who that person was.’’
Barrow also shed light on what the scene was like when he opened the helicopter door.
‘‘A lot of ash, a lot of gas. It was pretty hard work. We were wearing respirators – you couldn’t have worked in that environment without them at that time ... It was just a gassy, steamy environment with fresh ash.’’
‘‘I decided I needed to get closer to the action so I took one of my pilots with me, got airborne and out of Rotorua.’’
He said his colleague Brian Depauw, who was on the island at the time of the eruption and had his helicopter destroyed, was ‘‘physically great’’ and being well looked after by victim support staff members.
All of Depauw’s visitors, amazingly given their destroyed helicopter, made it off the island.
Barrow declined to comment on whether White Island will ever open to tourists again, insisting it’s ‘‘too soon to discuss that’’.
‘‘There’s some families out there right at the moment whose grief is incomprehensible and I don’t want to discuss that. Our concerns are the injured, the families of the deceased, [and] the welfare of our staff,’’ he said.
Barrow was thoughtful in his replies, but when asked if he himself would ever return he answered instantly. Yes.
‘‘We, along with Mark [Law], yesterday offered assistance in the recovery [of the deceased]. I don’t want to dwell on it . . . Our assistance is there and we’d only be too happy to help. Those decisions ultimately aren’t ours.’’
If that call does ever come, though, Barrow said he’d be back ‘‘in a heartbeat’’.
He’s candid, too, about the fact that he doesn’t really want to be grounded, about how the company has postponed all operations, and about discussing what he did and saw on White Island.
‘‘I would love nothing more than not to be part of this ... Our normal day at the office giving visitors to New Zealand a great experience [is] one of the greatest jobs . . . and White Island has been part of that for a long time.
‘‘In the fullness of time I believe we’ll get some direction as to where we will go as operators and individuals, but right now, our thoughts are in other places.’’