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Eruera Stephens has no doubt his friend Hayden Marshall-Inman died during the volcanic eruption in New Zealand trying to help others.
Key points:
- Friends have remembered New Zealand volcano victim Hayden Marshall-Inman
- Six people are confirmed dead, eight are missing and presumed dead
- An Australian federal police forensics team will help identify the bodies
Mr Stephens, his wife and their son went to lay flowers at the Whakatane waterfront for the experienced tour guide.
"He's always put everybody else before himself. He would have made sure everybody else got off the island before him," Mr Stephens said.
Among friends and co-workers, Mr Marshall-Inman was known for his acts of bravery.
"He even saved me one day. We were both out diving, just him and I. And I had an asthma attack in the middle of the ocean. He pulled me out," he said.
"A couple of years ago, when a boat caught on fire, he threw everyone off. He was the last one off. That's just what he does, it was him."
Mr Marshall-Inman, who worked for White Island Tours, was the first victim of Monday's tragedy to be publicly identified.
Mr Stephens and his family said they could not yet comprehend what had happened.
"He was my best man at my wedding, and he was my boss, my friend," Mr Stephens said.
White Island Tours has been dealing with calls from tourists demanding refunds.
For now, their vessels remain moored in Whakatane.
Death toll rises to six
New Zealand Police issued a statement confirming a sixth person had died following the volcanic eruption on White Island on Monday.
"The person was earlier being treated at Middlemore Hospital," the statement said.
"Police remain focused on supporting families at this terrible time."
Forty-seven tourists — many of them from the Ovation of the Seas cruise ship — and guides were on the tiny island when the volcano erupted on Monday afternoon, blasting a plume of smoke, ash, steam and rock more than 3.5 kilometres into the sky.
The six dead were among the 23 people evacuated from the island, with three Australians believed to be among the victims.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said 13 of those transported to hospital were Australians.
"Tragically, we believe that at least three of those are in the group of people identified as having been killed by this appalling event in New Zealand," she said.
She said a number of Australian consular officials were on the ground at every hospital, with more arriving this evening.
Specialist forensic teams from the Australian Federal Police and New South Wales Police are expected to soon arrive to help with the grim task of identifying bodies.
New Zealand Police said they are conducting an investigation into the deaths on behalf of the coroner, correcting an earlier police statement that they were launching a criminal investigation.
'We share in your grief and sorrow'
Eight people still remain unaccounted for, with search parties unable to set foot on the island since the explosion.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said reconnaissance flights showed no signs of life on the ash-covered island, and police doubted whether any survivors would be found.
"The scale of this tragedy is devastating," Ms Ardern said in Parliament.
"To those who have lost or are missing family and friends, we share in your grief and sorrow and we are devastated."
Of the 47 people on the uninhabited island at the time of the eruption, 24 came from Australia, nine from the United States, five from New Zealand, four from Germany, two each from China and the Britain and one from Malaysia.
"I would strongly suggest that there is no one that has survived on the island," police Deputy Commissioner John Tims said, of the eight people still missing.
Earlier Tuesday, Pete Watson from the New Zealand Ministry of Health said burns units across New Zealand were at capacity.
"The volume of work facing our national burns unit at Middlemore Hospital in one day is equivalent to the normal workload that they would see in a typical year at the burns unit at Middlemore," he said.
Of the 31 injured, he said at least 27 suffered greater than 30 per cent body surface burns.
Some are being prepared to be taken to Australia for treatment to ease pressure on hospitals in New Zealand.
Two tour groups on the island
New Zealand's geological hazards agency GeoNet raised the alert level for the volcano in November because of an increase in volcanic activity.
GNS Science, New Zealand's geoscience agency, warned there was a 50/50 chance of another eruption in the coming 24 hours, as the volcano vent continued to emit "steam and mud jetting".
The volcano, known as 'Whakaari' in the Maori language, had its last fatal eruption in 1914, when 12 sulphur miners were killed.
Yet daily tours bring more than 10,000 visitors each year to the privately owned island, marketed as "the world's most accessible active marine volcano".
A crater rim camera owned and operated by GeoNet showed one group of people walking away from the rim inside the crater just a minute before the explosion.
"It's now clear that there were two groups on the island — those who were able to be evacuated and those who were close to the eruption," Ms Ardern said at a morning news conference in Whakatane, a town on the mainland's east coast, about 50km from White Island.
Later, in parliament, she paid tribute to the pilots of four helicopters that landed on White Island in the aftermath of the eruption.
"In their immediate efforts to get people off the island, those pilots made an incredibly brave decision under extremely dangerous circumstances," Ardern said.
People ran into the sea to escape harm
A New Zealand man, Geoff Hopkins, whose tour group was just leaving the island at the time of the eruption, said he helped pull critically injured survivors into a boat.
He said many of the survivors had run into the sea to escape the eruption.
"People were in shorts and T-shirts so there was a lot of exposed skin that was massively burnt," he told the NZ Herald newspaper.
Malaysia's high commission in New Zealand said one Malaysian was among the dead, while Britain's high commissioner to New Zealand confirmed two British women were among the injured.
Russell Clark, an intensive care paramedic with a helicopter team, said the early scenes were overwhelming.
"Everything was just blanketed in ash," he said.
"It was quite an overwhelming feeling."
ABC/Reuters
Topics: volcanic-eruption, disasters-and-accidents, tourism, travel-and-tourism, new-zealand
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