A New Zealand judge has ordered tourism companies to pay out $NZ10.2m ($9.56m) in compensation to the victims of the Whakaari/White Island disaster.
The island’s management company, as well as tour operators, were this week sentenced in Auckland District Court, and were handed millions of dollars in fines, and ordered to pay millions more in damages.
Twenty-two people, including 17 Australians, died when the island’s volcano erupted on December 9, 2019.
There were 47 people on the island for a walking tour at the time. The remaining 25 survivors suffered injuries, many of them serious.
Whakaari Management Limited, the island’s corporate management company, as well as tour companies White Island Tours, Volcanic Air Safaris, Kahu Limited and Aerius Limited were prosecuted by the country’s health and safety regulator WorkSafe NZ.
Whakaari Management Limited was this week found guilty of two breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act, and was slugged with a $975,000 penalty, and was ordered to pay an additional $4.5m in reparations to victims.
White Island Tours, which operated tours to the island, was also fined $483,000 and was ordered to pay $4.6m in compensation to victims.
Volcanic Air Safaris, which held a licence to take tourists to the island via helicopter, was ordered to pay $470,000 in fines and $300,000 to victims.
Kahu and Aerius were both fined $271,000 and $183,000 respectively.
White Island Tours, Volcanic Air Safaris, Kahu Limited and Aerius Limited all pleaded guilty to breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act relating to their customers and workers.
Handing down his judgement, judge Evangelos Thomas found that the tour operators undertook risk assessments which were “fundamentally inadequate”
“The safety information tour operators provided to their paying customers was wholly inadequate, not sufficiently informing paying customers about the hazards, the risk, the consequences of an eruption,” he said in a judgment published on Friday.
The court heard that several of the companies were now either in liquidation or in a weak financial position.
Judge Thomas told the court that Whakaari Management Limited (WML) never held a bank account and claimed to have no assets.
“That must be difficult for survivors and families to stomach,” Judge Thomas said.
The company is owned by brothers Andrew, James, and Peter Buttle but Judge Thomas said: “I cannot make orders against shareholders, only WML.”
He said there was nothing stopping the Buttle family from advancing the money to WML to pay its fines and reparations.
“There may be no commercial basis for doing so, but many would argue there is an inescapable moral one,” Judge Thomas said.
“Some defendants responded to the tragedy with a preparedness to put their lives at risk to help others.
“We wait to see what the Buttles will do. The world is watching.”