‘You cannot mend a mother's broken heart’

“Grief never goes away, but you learn to carry it with you, as hard as it gets,” Hayden Marshall-Inman’s mother told Auckland District Court yesterday.

Forty-seven people were on Whakaari White Island when it erupted on December 9, 2019, with 22 dying from extreme burns and blast injuries. Marshall-Inman was one of them.

Five companies which pleaded guilty and one company which was found guilty in a judge-alone trial are set to be sentenced for failing to meet their obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act in the lead-up to the eruption.

Survivors of the disaster and family of those who died during the eruption have spoken – many for the first time – about the ongoing effects the disaster had on them.

Marshall-Inman, 40, was working as a tour guide with White Island Tours from Whakatāne at the time of the eruption.

Marshall-Inman's mother, Avey Woods, told the court: “When Hayds died on White Island, a part of me died. My heart carries the loss of him day and night. You cannot mend a mother's broken heart.“

Woods described Marshall-Inman as a “man with a beautiful soul, very humble, treated everyone as an equal”.

“Grief never goes away, but you learn to carry it with you, as hard as it is..”

Mother and daughter Julie, 47, and Jessica Richards, 20, were on a day trip from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship when the eruption happened. Both died.

Barbara Whitehead, Julie's sister and Jessica's aunt, provided the court with a victim impact statement which was read aloud by WorkSafe representative Casey Broad.

Whitehead said the day Whakaari White

Island erupted was a “sad day that will be in the hearts of many families worldwide”.

“When the news of the tragedy broke, all of us were hoping for a miracle that would never be,” Whitehead's statement said.

“Mother and daughter, best friends, they adored each other and were adored.”

Whitehead detailed how she had been asked to complete DNA tests to identify her sister and niece.

“I sincerely hope that nothing like this ever happens again,” she said.

At the conclusion of the reading of the victim impact statements, Judge Evangelos Thomas thanked all of those who had “given so much of yourselves over the past few days”.

“There are enough people who have suffered who are in this room, but it’s important that we remember that this tragedy touched many, many lives here and around the world,” he said.

Judge Thomas also paid tribute to the local Whakatāne community, the first responders to the disaster, hospitals, nurses, therapists and those involved in the rescue and recovery efforts.

“Many of those have suffered greatly, some never returned to work after what they had to deal with. It's important that we recognise how deeply this tragedy has left its mark everywhere.”

The sentencing will continue with submissions from WorkSafe lawyer Kristy McDonald KC and lawyers for Whakaari Management Limited, White Island Tour, Volcanic Air Safaris Ltd, Aerius Ltd and Kahu New Zealand Ltd.

The country’s lead agency for monitoring volcanoes, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited, will be sentenced separately. One company – InFlite Charters – has already been sentenced – fined $227,500 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of $40,000.