Police had talked of emergency test run on White Island

Police talked about doing an emergency exercise at Whakaari for six years before the deadly 2019 eruption but it never happened.

They also faced difficulties getting a shelter set up at the island with first-aid stores, because the Department of Internal Affairs didn’t want “to take responsibility”, meeting minutes obtained through an Official Information Act request show.

The news comes as the volcano was raised to alert level 2 yesterday afternoon after volcanic ash was detected in the island’s gas plume.

Twenty-one people died from burns and blast injuries, and more than a dozen others were critically injured, after Whakaari/White Island erupted on December 9 last year.

Police were the lead agency for the search and rescue (SAR) response but they have been heavily criticised in the months since, because police and rescue helicopter services initially deemed it too dangerous to set foot on the island, 50km from shore.

Instead, private helicopter pilots who regularly took tourists to the island, and a White Island Tours boat, brought survivors back to land in the first two hours after the eruption at 2.11pm.

Meeting minutes show that at all 24 Eastern Bay of Plenty Emergency Services Co-ordinating Committee meetings between December 2013 and November 2019 — the latter only weeks before the eruption — first responders highlighted the need to go to Whakaari and practise a mass rescue. Whakata¯ne police chaired all the meetings.

The minutes to the meetings were requested in May but police and Bay of Plenty Civil Defence and Emergency Management (CDEM) refused to provide them.

Six months later, the police have released them, after two Ombudsman’s investigations and consultation with the Chief Coroner.

Police refused to answer questions about the committee minutes, stating another Official Information Act request was necessary.

When a request was submitted, the police then said the information could not be released because it would be part of the coronial inquest. NZME has lodged a further complaint to the Ombudsman’s office.