From left: Jake after more than three months in hospital. White Island minutes after the eruption, by Michael Schade
2.09 PM. Tour guide Jake Milbank was watching fellow guide Kelsey Waghorn address a group of almost 20 tourists in the moon-like crater of New Zealandâs White Island. She was up to the bit of the tour about the islandâs freshwater streams, and how various minerals give each a different flavour. She pointed to the water in one and explained that it tasted a bit like lemon juice, while the other contained so much iron that it tasted like blood.2.10 PM. It was only a small group that day, mostly Australians; a few Americans. It was to be a shorter tour too. The island had been on Alert Level 2 due to unusual levels of seismic activity over the last few months, which made the crater a little more exciting for the tourists, but was just more of the same for Jake. Theyâd given the usual safety briefing and told everyone to keep their hardhats on at all times. Then theyâd shown the group how to put on their gas masks, and told them to seek cover behind one of the islandâs rocky mounds if something happened. In that case, theyâd radio the skipper back on the boat and follow the streams down to the wharf where theyâd be collected. It was the same old safety briefing Jake had heard a few hundred times.2.11 PM. The second tour group was now at the crater lake, where Jakeâs group had been a few minutes earlier. He was looking in that direction when he saw it. Against the clear blue sky, a grey-black puff of ash shot straight into the air. For just a moment it had the group mesmerised, all of them pointing at the dark column rising hundreds of metres straight into the air. Then they snapped back to reality. Both Jake and Kelsey began yelling at everyone to get cover. He began to run, waving the group towards some of the bigger rocky mounds nearby, trying to draw people over to him.The day was December 9, 2019. Jake had been a tour guide for exactly one year and one day. Growing up just outside Whakatane, on New Zealandâs Bay of Plenty, heâd developed a love of the outdoors. As a kid heâd spent his days fishing and hunting, and when he finished Year 13 he applied for a job with White Island Tours. Initially he thought he was applying for a job as a deckhand, which would mean simply ferrying passengers back and forth from the island. What he didnât realise was that he was also supposed to be doing the talking. He was a shy kid, but he thought heâd give it a crack, so he started listening to the other guides and learned the lines from them. About three months into the role, he began to relax.On this day, thoughâthe day he would nearly dieâJake wasnât even meant to be there. It was his 19th birthday, and heâd taken the day off. But one of his colleagues called in sick. Jakeâs boss had called that morning to see if he could come in, and Jake said âsweet asâ and headed over to Whakataneâs docks to load up the boat.By the end of the day, 22 people would be dead with another 25 injured. Jake would end up suffering burns to 79 percent of his body, with only his feet, armpits and the skin beneath his shorts spared. But he would surviveâand a little more than a year on, he remains amazingly composed remembering the day of December 9, 2019.Seconds after the first eruption, another detonation hurled a pyroclastic flow across the crater. Itâs a common misconception that a volcanoâs most dangerous projectile is lava, which in reality moves quite slowly and predictably. A pyroclastic flow, on the other hand, is not slow. Imagine an avalanche of ash and superheated gas, towering hundreds of metres high, bearing down on Jakeâs group at 200 kilometres an hour. That was the real threat.Just 15 seconds had passed since the first eruption. Jake hadnât had time to think; it was all just reflex, not even processing what he was seeing. But he and the others had just reached the cover of the rocky mounds nearbyâsome of the best cover on the whole island, Jake saysâwhen the sunny day turned pitch black.As they trudged their way through the hot ash, Jake started to realise he was in bad shape. He looked down at his arms and saw the skin âhanging down it was so burned offâ.âWhen we got to the wharf I grabbed one of the handrails of the ladder and the skin on my palm slid off,â he remembers. âAt that point it was just âget on the boat, get home, get to hospitalâ.âSpared the worst of the eruption off the islandâs coast, the boat that had ferried the groups 50 kilometres across the Bay of Plenty to White Island now sped back to collect the casualties on the wharf. Everyone was trying to get into the boat as quickly as they could, Jake remembers, but it wasnât easy. He thinks he was probably in shock for the journey back to the wharf, but as they crowded onto the boat the pain began to set in.âYouâd get really hot, and then really cold, so they were putting those foil blankets on us and taking them off again and pouring water on our eyes, trying to get out the ash and acid.âTouching everything, leaning against the seats or sitting down was obviously bloody painful. Theyâve got the green whistles in the first aid kit, and there were two of them being kind of shared around.ââLooking around, everyone was all pretty bad. We were all lying down and screaming for help every now and then. People screaming âhelp meâ or âgive me waterâ. So that makes it a lot worse.âI was thinking that I wasnât as bad as some of the people. There were people screaming a lot more than others.âHe remembers the whole terrible trip back to the mainland, and being helped off the boat into an ambulance, but then only flashes of doctors and nurses before he was put into a two-week, medically-induced coma. He remembers it like going to sleep: one minute he was in hospital, surrounded by medical staff, and the next he was waking up, dazed from medication, hallucinating. But as he got his wits back he wanted to asses the damage.âI had my sister and my mum taking photos of me, because I couldnât really move, showing me how bad I was. They didnât know if that was a good idea, but I was adamant,â he remembers. âI wanted to see it I guess. I saw it all, and that was when I realised how bad I was.âIn the weeks that followed he was going to the operating theatre every three or four days to get new skin grafts or have bandages changed. The first month was a blur, between the surgeries and medications. But the frequency of those operations slowed down as they had to start waiting for his donor skin sites to heal over. The pain throughout that time âwas crazy, too painful to describe in wordsâ.And then there was hearing about the others that didnât make it. In the days and weeks that followed bodies were recovered from the island, and others who had made it off like Jake had died in hospitals in New Zealand and Australia. One of Jakeâs mentors at White Island Tours, Hayden Marshall-Inman, had died along with almost the entire group that was in the crater when the eruption had started.âThat was pretty tough,â he says, reflecting for a moment on how Hayden had shown him the ropes, given him tips, and helped him overcome his inherent shyness in front of an audience. âIt was pretty tough to hear about him.âInitially Jake and his family were warned that he may be in intensive care for four months and the hospital for up to a year, but following a gruelling series of operations and physiotherapy to rebuild his atrophied muscles he walked out after three months and three weeks.âIâve done better than I thought I would,â he says. âI guess Iâve always been quite a positive person. I knew that there was other people doing a lot worse than me, and there was a lot of stuff to look forward to. To begin with it was just to get out and eat some real food because the hospital food was average. And then it was get back into the bush, get back out fishing.âJake has had 26 operations to date, a number of which took place after leaving hospital to release the tightness of scarred skin that was prohibiting a greater range of movement. Heâs got another on his badly scarred right hand in February.While looking in the mirror these days is âpretty crazyâ sometimes, Jake says his brush with death hasnât really changed him as a person.âI like to think it hasnât changed me too much, in terms of my personality and what I like to do and whatnot,â he says. âOf course itâs changed my physical appearance quite a bit, but I like to not let that get in my way.ââItâs going to be a hard day to remember for a long time I guess, because I lost close friends. But I just donât have any bad feelings towards the island. Itâs a volcano, New Zealandâs most active volcano, and they erupt I guess. Iâve been back since, not on the island, but on the boat, just sitting out off the beach. Itâs a beautiful place; amazing. You have to be there to understand it.âAs told to Chris Shearer. Follow him on Twitter
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âThe first thing you kind of notice is how strong the gas was, even with your gas mask on,â Jake says. âAnd then it just got instantly hot, and everyone was screaming because it was like being in a bloody oven. Very, very hot. Very, very loud, because it was just moving so fast.âSmall rocks and chunks of ash were hitting all around us, and the wind was kind of howling. It just sounded like being in a hurricane basically, a hot hurricane.âFor nearly a minute-and-a-half Jakeâs group huddled against the mound. At one point he recalls trying to open his eyes, which were immediately clogged full of ash and acidic gas. In the darkness he could hear everyone around him screaming and it felt, he says, like âa long, long timeâ.âItâs just so hot, youâre just screaming for your life basically. Thereâs not much you can do, because if you move out from the shelter youâre going to get blown away. Itâs so strong. So I just knew how hot it was, how bad we were.âFinally the volcano relented and the flow subsided. Following the safety plan, the group stumbled towards the creek, which led them to the wharf.âI could barely even see the creek, but once we were down in it I kind of knew where the sun, was so I could use that to keep in the right direction. As long as I stayed in the creek I knew Iâd make it down to the beach.
âIt was basically just an adrenaline fuelled rush to get down to the water to the boat. You couldnât really run because of all of the ash, it was so thick. It was like walking in powdered snow. It was so thick and so deep, up towards our knees, halfway up the shin.â
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