Survivor’s moving message: I miss you
Ayoung woman critically injured in the Whakaari/ White Island tragedy which also took the lives of her sister and father is no longer in a coma and has been able to post on social media.
The Browitt family, from Melbourne, were on what was meant to be the holiday of a lifetime. They were passengers on board the Ovation of the Seas cruise ship to celebrate Krystal Browitt’s 21st birthday when she, her father, Paul, and 23-year-old sister, Stephanie, took an excursion to White Island with other tourists on December 9.
Paul’s wife, and Krystal and Stephanie’s mother, Marie, opted to stay onboard the cruise ship.
Both Krystal and Paul died of injuries suffered in the eruption. Krystal’s body was discovered on White Island on December 13, while Paul died of his injuries in Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital last month.
Stephanie suffered life-threatening burns. After being treated in Christchurch Hospital for several days, she was later airlifted back to Melbourne in a coma to Alfred Hospital.
Now, about five weeks after her father’s death, she has begun posting on social media, including telling her friends of her love for them and how much she misses them.
In response to wellwishers, Stephanie has posted several comments, including telling a workmate: “Thank you! I miss you all also.”
She told another friend: “Can’t wait to see you all again!”
Other responses to friends feature love hearts, thanks for their support and telling another friend: “Love you”.
Paul and Krystal Browitt are among the 21 people who died in the White Island disaster.
Just three days after the tragedy, family friend Steven Galea spoke of the anguish Marie was enduring while keeping a bedside vigil for Stephanie in Christchurch Hospital.
“She [Marie] is not coping. Who copes with this? No one. You just try to get through it. Four people went on a plane and three came back,” he told the Australian.
“Questions like, ‘What do you need?’ are met with, ‘I need my family alive’. How do you respond to that?”
Galea added: “This is a nightmare and they’ve been living in it.”
He set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for the Browitts. The page has so far raised almost $78,000.
“They’re a working-class family. They’re going to need money when they get back. Funerals cost money, flights cost money, I don’t know, life costs money,” Galea said in midDecember. “She doesn’t care about any of this right now, her focus is on her family and being with them.”