‘I was just knocked over’: New Zealand volcano survivor tells of harrowing ordeal

A survivor of the White Island volcano eruption has spoken out about the tragic ordeal, criticising New Zealand authorities, saying that more lives could’ve been saved.

Melbourne woman Stephanie Browitt was on the trip of a lifetime with her family when disaster struck on December 9, 2019. She was left with third-degree burns to roughly 70 per cent of her body and lost parts of her fingers in the disaster. Her father, Paul and sister, Krystal, 21, who she was touring the island with, were among the 21 victims who died as a result of the eruption.

In an exclusive interview with Four Corners this week, Browitt described the horrifying wait for help to arrive.

“Everyone was just on the ground,” she said. “There was one person lying flat on their belly just spread out, who was screaming in pain, another person who was yelling for help. I remember thinking: ‘I don’t know why people are yelling, like, there’s just no one near, around us, we’re on an island in the middle of the ocean’.”

Stephanie was one of 12 people rescued by a group of local helicopter tour pilots who risked their own lives to save them and said that she was frustrated with the response from New Zealand authorities, who did not immediately send help to the island.

“I’m upset at the whole situation, but I’m very angry that it took so long for the rescue to come,” Stephanie said. “Now I realise rescue actually wasn’t coming. It was just three pilots who chose to risk their own lives to help us and if they hadn’t come, we’d all be gone.

“I know that if help had come sooner, there would probably be more people alive from our group.”

Stephanie, Krystal and Paul were part of a group of 38 people from the Ovation of the Seas cruise ship on a day trip to White Island on that fateful day. Her mother Marie had stayed on the ship docked in the Bay of Plenty.

Stephanie told Four Corners that her family reached the crater of the volcano just six minutes before it erupted. As they walked back to the jetty where the boat was waiting for them, Krystal was at the back of the group chatting with the tour guide and taking photos.

Paul and Stephanie turned to see how far Krystal was behind them.

“That’s when we started to see some ash coming out of the volcano,” Stephanie said.

“My dad was like, ‘Look, Krystal, look, take a photo,’ because we had no idea at that point that it was dangerous or anything. We just thought, ‘cool’.

“That’s when the front tour guide, Hayden, must’ve heard us or something, I’m not sure, but he yelled, “Run!”.

As Stephanie ran, she was hit by a surge of ash and rock, which she described as being taken by a wave.

“I was just knocked over,” she recalled. “I was tumbling, rolling, for minutes. I mean it felt like forever until it stopped and then it was just burning hot.

“I remember trying to stand up and it took so much energy just to stand up I remember thinking, “I can’t believe how hard this is. My legs just felt like jelly.”

It was nearly an hour after the volcano erupted that help arrived. Mark Law, a pilot from the aviation tour company, Kahu Helicopters had seen the eruption from the mainland and flew his helicopter to White Island to help survivors.

Stephanie was put into the front seat of a helicopter and was flown back to the mainland along with four other victims. She was later flown to Melbourne with her father, Paul, who died in hospital four weeks later.

Tragically, four months on from the incident, the family still don’t know what happened to Krystal after the eruption, or how she was brought back to the mainland when she died.

“I want to know who my daughter died with,” Marie told Four Corners. “I want to know why and if my baby suffered.”

Stephanie and Marie also expressed their frustrations with the cruise ship operator, Royal Caribbean, for their when they booked the tour.

“We didn’t sign any waivers, get any receipts, nothing,” Stephanie said. “We were just told a two-sentence description in the tour book on Royal Caribbean about how we would be visiting White Island and be enjoying it and then a scenic boat ride that would have a lunch as well on board,” Stephanie said.

Despite everything she has been through over the past four months, Stephanie remains positive, saying she is “grateful” to be alive.

“I don’t feel like giving up,” she said. “I do feel like continuing, doing what I want to do.”

But she doesn’t feel she can truly move forward until she knows what happened to her sister.

“We just want answers to help give us that closure.”