Skip to main content

Police Search and Rescue and Specialist Group staff ready to deploy to the island. Photo: Senior Sergeant Karl Wilson.

Police led two recovery missions to Whakaari/White Island after the December 9, 2019, eruption - one on December 13 and one on December 15. By Ellen Brook.

Inspector Mark Fergus was the forward commander for both, working with the New Zealand Defence Force and GNS Science to bring home those who had died. He was also the DVI (disaster victim identification) commander overseeing specialist work by police teams close to the scene and at the Auckland mortuary to confirm the identity of each person killed.

On the first recovery mission, patrol vessel HMNZ Wellington was stationed near the island. On board were Mark, defence staff, Police DVI specialists and a vulcanologist providing support for defence recovery teams. The Auckland Police launch Deodar and the Police dive squad were also at the site.

Eight victims had been on the island and six were brought out by the defence staff who went ashore during the recovery. The remaining two, sighted earlier near a creek, were assumed to have been washed away during a heavy rainstorm later on the day of the eruption.

On December 15, police staff were back on the island, following a thread of hope, to search for the bodies of 40-year-old tour guide Hayden Marshall-Inman and 17-year-old Australian tourist Winona Langford. Neither was found.

“We knew where they were likely to have been,” says Mark. “There was a high likelihood they had been washed out to sea, but there was also a possibility that one had been covered in silt and was still in the creek bed. We needed to check to provide answers for the families.”

Eight Search & Rescue and Specialist Search Group staff, trained in the use of breathing apparatus, spent 75 minutes (the maximum time considered safe on the island with toxic gas in the air and volcanic activity continuing) searching the silt and mud with special probes. The team had conceived the probe design in a matter of hours, and a local engineering firm manufactured them overnight.

That operation was overseen by Mark from Deodar. Another fully trained and kitted-up team was ready in case the land search took longer than the allocated 75 minutes, and defence and civilian helicopters were on standby to evacuate staff if necessary.

“It was the culmination of years of police work,” Mark says, “bringing together disciplines from a range of specialist groups. Some of the Police staff had been trained for Pike River, so they understood about gas monitoring and keeping safe while using breathing apparatus.

“Our people showed great courage and initiative when they returned to the scene of the disaster, still considered an active volcano,” Mark says. “They were the last men and women to set foot on White Island.”

Inspector Mark Fergus, the DVI commander and forward commander for the recovery missions to Whakaari, in liaison on HMNZ Wellington, which was stationed offshore. Photo: Senior Sergeant Karl Wilson.

Meanwhile, the DVI (disaster victim identification) phase had begun, first in Whakatāne and then in Auckland.

DVI specialist Senior Sergeant Steve Harwood, a shift commander at Wellington Central, was sent to Auckland to join other DVI staff, including some from Australian police jurisdictions.

He says it’s hard, even with hindsight, to fully explain the complexity of the task they faced.

“It was so technically difficult, even getting the bodies off the island, due to the conditions that staff were going into,” he says. “There were health and safety aspects with the handling of bodies that had been exposed to contaminants.”

It was not Steve’s first experience with mass fatalities. He went to the Netherlands to ID victims of the downed MH17 airliner over Ukraine in 2014. He was part of the response after the Christchurch mosque attacks earlier in 2019 and worked in Thailand after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

“We assumed that having been through Christchurch we could take some learnings from that and adapt it to this situation, but it presented a whole different set of problems because of the nature of the injuries, the location of the deceased and the environment of an active volcano, including how to treat the bodies once they were found, and the effect of carrying out post-mortems and medical examinations on those bodies.”

Victims continued to come in over the days and weeks. “We dealt with 11 Australians, three from the United States and two New Zealanders.”

A linchpin of DVI work is the accurate identification of the deceased and that, says Steve, is reliant on three core identifiers – DNA, dental and fingerprints. “In an ideal world, we would have all three, but we only need one for conclusive proof and it’s critical we get it right, which is why the DVI process can take a while.

“We have to be exact, because there have been cases overseas where bodies have not been property identified and the wrong person has been returned to a family.”

After long hours of precise and taxing work over several weeks, working with forensic pathologists, the ESR, the Police fingerprint section and a team of forensic dentists, they were eventually able to ID everyone. The work also involved family liaison officers and assistance from Australian police to obtain dental records.

Mark Fergus says it is an area in which New Zealand Police excel, remaining flexible and adaptable to overcome challenges.

“We asked things of our staff that seemed almost impossible, but they met all challenges with courage, with respect for the deceased and empathy for the families. Bringing closure for families during their darkest times is the highest privilege.”