A New Zealand judge has criticised a company’s “astonishing failures” over the death of 22 people who died in a volcano disaster.
Whakaari Management, which licences tours to New Zealand’s White Island, was found guilty of not minimising risk to those on the tour over the 2019 volcano eruption, which also left 25 injured.
Judge Evangelos Thomas said: “It should have been no surprise that Whakaari could erupt at any time, and without warning, at the risk of death and serious injury.”
The case was the largest of its kind brought by Worksafe NZ, New Zealand’s workplace health and safety regulator.
The company faces fines totalling up to NZ$1.5m (£724,000).
The victims were on the east coast island as part of a tour operation to have a close look at an active volcano.
The company was the sole defendant in the case after six other entities, including personal charges against the company’s owners, were dismissed.
White Island had also been erupting in some form since 2011 when the tour took place in 2019.
Justice Thomas criticised “astonishing failures” of safety audits given the “obvious risks” of visiting the active volcano.
He said the company should have sought expert advice - but that this advice was also “common sense”.
“In WML’s case, it should have appreciated that it could [not] rely on risk assessment work being done by others to relieve it of its own obligation in relation to risk … it needed to stop and re-evaluate,” he said.
James Cairney, the lawyer for Whakaari Management, had argued the company did not have active control in the day-to-day operations of tours to the island and was a landowner only.
Almost half of the 47 people on the island were killed in the December 2019 eruption, including 17 from Australia, three from the US, and two from New Zealand.
Some of the tourists who bought their tour ticket through Royal Caribbean Cruises have already reached settlements after suing the Florida-based cruise liner company in the US.
