Why did emergency services not rescue anyone from White Island?

Radio NZ reports:

The coronial inquest into the Whakaari/White Island disaster has begun to look into how emergency services responded to the 2019 eruption and whether decisions impacted the chances of survival for those on the island.

The Whakaari/ White Island tragedy killed 22 people and seriously injured 25 others on 9 December, 2019.

The counsel assisting the bereaved families and the survivors of the tragedy, Anna Adams, said questions remained over why help didn’t arrive sooner.

She had previously told the inquest that 39 people were rescued from the island on the day of the eruption, entirely by civilian boats and helicopters.

I am glad this will be a focus of the inquiry. Basically if civilians hadn’t gone in, there would very possible be an additional 25 dead people. I can’t recall many disasters where emergency services rescued no one, but civilians rescued 39 people.

First responders are heroes. Their job requires them to go into dangerous situations. Firefighters go into burning buildings. Police have to confront armed offenders. Like most NZers, I am in awe of first responders.

A few months ago there was a school shooting in the US, and an armed police officer didn’t enter the building, leaving the kids at the mercy of the shooter. There was huge criticism of that.

There is no expectation that first responders should go into a situation where death is certain or even probable. But the job is to take a higher degree of risk in order to protect or save people. The cop who got shot by Tom Phillips is an example of that.

I suspect there were many first responders who would have happily helped rescue people from White Island, and that it was at the command level that the decision was made not to go in. A decision that would have probably led to 25 more dead people if it were not for the civilians who went in and rescued them.