More details emerged Monday about the devastating volcanic eruption last week on a tiny island off New Zealand.
Sixteen people, most of them tourists, are now known dead. Two are missing and presumed dead, their bodies probably in the sea. Searchers returned to the island on Sunday, but were unsuccessful.
Twenty severely burned survivors remain in critical condition, suffering from burns to their bodies, faces and lungs caused by superheated gas and ash, reports the BBC.
A minute of silence was observed in New Zealand on Monday, at the moment the eruption happened one week earlier.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern paid tribute to “many people who did extraordinary things to save lives”, adding: “Those who have been lost are now forever linked to New Zealand, and we will hold them close.”
Of the 47 people who were on the island when the eruption happened, 24 were from Australia, nine from the U.S., five from New Zealand, four from Germany, two from China, two from Britain and one from Malaysia.
“Relatives of a newlywed American couple say the husband and wife were severely burned,” reports the Associated Press. Matthew and Lauren Urey, from Richmond VA, were on their honeymoon trip. Little has been said about their conditions since the initial announcement.
Most of those on the island were passengers on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Ovation of the Seas, which was anchored nearby.
“Many people were left questioning why tourists were still allowed to visit the island after seismic monitoring experts raised the volcano’s alert level last month,” the AP says.
Experts warn that there’s a substantial chance of a second, smaller eruption soon. Police were using drones to check for toxic gases coming from the volcano.
“White Island is New Zealand’s most active cone volcano, built up by more than 150,000 years of volcanic activity” said CNN, citing GeoNet, a New Zealand website offering “geological hazard information.”
The volcano — known by the indigenous Maori name Whakaari — is “one of the world’s most accessible active volcanoes,” according to the White Island Tours website.
The first confirmed death was of a popular local man — Hayden Marshall-Inman, a fisherman who also worked as a guide showing tourists around the island.
The disaster is likely to have severe economic consequences for Marshall-Inman’s community — Whakatane, a town of 20,000 on the northeastern shore of New Zealand’s North Island, and the jumping-off point for visitors to the volcano.
“White Island has long been promoted as New Zealand’s most active volcano, appearing in ‘Lord of the Rings’ and other blockbusters, when it is in fact little more than its dangerous apex,” said the New York Times. “Around 70 percent of the volcano sits under the water, and tourists walk into its crater and up to the lip of its crater lake, peering into its cavity to see its endlessly boiling core.”