The bodies left behind on New Zealand’s White Island, where a volcano scalded dozens this week, could be forever entombed by volcanic ash if the recovery effort doesn’t proceed quickly, experts said.
Authorities announced that a team of military specialists will land on the small volcanic island just after first light Friday to retrieve the bodies of eight more people presumed dead after the Monday eruption that officials confirmed claimed eight other lives.
The recovery attempt will go ahead even though scientists believe another eruption is possible on White Island, police said late Thursday.
Time is of the essence, according to Mark Law, a helicopter pilot who helped lead the rescue from the island in the immediate aftermath of the eruption.
“The acidity of the island … always has been brutal,” Law told Stuff.co.nz. “There’s a scenario unfolding here where if that seismograph keeps rolling along like it will, [rescuers] won’t go.”
Intermittent rain has been falling in Whatakane, about 31 miles from the island, over the past day — but it’s unclear if the island saw any precipitation, according to the report.
“If acidity doesn’t break the people down, then they could get covered,” Law told the outlet. “If it continues to murmur away for the next two or three weeks or two or three months and they are not prepared to commit, the island might ash again.
“So there’s more ash on the folks, then there’s obviously the breakdown of their bodies because of the acidity,” he continued. “There might be a real chance that we don’t get out there and get them.”
Phil Shane, an associate professor of geology at the University of Auckland who studies the history of volcanoes, told Stuff that such an occurrence is not uncommon.
Ash particles come in a range of sizes, and they can cement together and harden when wet, he said.
“That has happened at other volcanoes,” Shane said. “I can’t categorically say it would happen here but that’s a common phenomenon in ash fall.”
Shane said he agreed that the acidic environment could decompose the bodies left on the island.
“But that might be balanced out by if the body is buried or partly buried, it might not be fully exposed to the acidic conditions,” he told the outlet.
It comes down to a judgment call for authorities heading to the ravaged island, he said.
“To tell the truth, you could probably go now, or you could have gone yesterday, it’s all a matter of your perception of risk,” Shane added.
Authorities say 24 Australians, nine Americans, five New Zealanders, four Germans, two Britons, two Chinese and a Malaysian were visiting the island at the time of the eruption. Many were from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship that had left Sydney two days earlier.
