Whakaari White Island survivors held their breath for two minutes underwater

A new account of White Island helicopter pilot Brian Depauw’s life-saving instructions to his passengers on the crater shoreline reveals that the group held their breath for two minutes underwater as the ash cloud floated overhead. .

Depauw was a pilot of the Air Safaris helicopter tours, and landed his helicopter on the White Island shortly before the eruption at 2.11pm on December 9 last year that killed 21 people.

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Depauw’s instructions to his four German passengers to “jump into the water” upon seeing the massive column of volcanic ash rising 3,600 meters to the sky, have been widely praised.

But new details of the moments after the group’s jump to the Pacific Ocean have been reported in the U.S. publication Outside.

In the article published on April 15, he delights. Depauw saw a dark wave of ash roll over the surface of the ocean after he had jumped below him, with two of his passengers.

His other two passengers did not reach the water and suffered severe burns.

Depauw relayed his thoughts to Outside as he jumped into the ocean: “This is it. You can’t survive this.”

Depauw and the two passengers who escaped unharmed said they were in complete darkness for about two minutes, at which point some light began to return.

He told the Outsider that once he surfaced, the water around him was covered in a dirty yellow powder that reeked of sulfur.

But behind the initial wave of ash, the air was beginning to clear.

After surfacing, Depauw and his passengers swam ashore, as the Phoenix cruise ship, patrolled by Paul Kingi, ran toward the jetty where the burned tourists now congregated.

American woman Ivy Kohn Reed, 51, of Maryland, north of Washington, DC, was one of the passengers on the island during the eruption that appears, hands on hips, waiting to board.

A man was also sitting on the jetty.

Finally, it can be seen that the group’s clothes are covered in ashes and the people’s limbs appear blackened.

Once aboard Kingi’s ship, Kelsey Waghorn is covered in ashes and shaky. Jake Milbank is also covered and lying on the bow, looking up at the sky.

On a handful of trips around the island, Kingi and his crew picked up 25 passengers, including Depauw and his four clients.

As the Phoenix prepared to return to Whakatāne, Kingi switched boats to the Te Puia Whakaari cruise ship, to make a final sweep of the coast.

Upon entering the crater, Kingi saw a figure emerge from the ash that turned out to be 19-year-old Jesse Langford, who had been with group guide Hayden Marshall-Inman inside the cauldron with his father Anthony, 51, his mother Kristine, 45, and sister Winona, 17.

Langford had managed to get out of the crater, but every part of him seemed burned to Kingi.

All the other members of Langford’s family died on the White Island.

Carefully, Kingi helped the teenager into the dingy one that had crossed to the White Island, and quickly returned him to the Te Puia Whakaari cruise ship that ran back to Whakatāne.

At that time, Kingi learned that another cruise ship, the Peejay IV, was returning to the island after disembarking its passengers unharmed at Whakatāne.

Kingi decided to stay on the ash-covered volcano and continue searching.