The Eruption That Killed 22 Was One of the Smallest on This Page
Whakaari has 42 eruptions in our Smithsonian GVP record, and it has never once exceeded VEI 3. Twenty-seven of those 42 are VEI 2, seven are VEI 1, and just seven reach VEI 3. By the standards of the volcanoes most people have heard of — Krakatoa, Pinatubo, St. Helens — Whakaari is a small volcano that does small things.
The 9 December 2019 eruption was a VEI 2: a steam-driven blast that lasted a couple of minutes and threw ash and rock a short distance across the crater. On the explosivity scale it barely registers. It killed 22 of the 47 people on the island anyway. That is the single most important fact about Whakaari, and it is the one the coverage tends to lose: lethality on an active volcano is about where you are standing, not how big the eruption is. A small blast with people inside the crater is far more dangerous than a huge one with nobody within 20 kilometres.
The number that matters: the 2019 eruption rated just VEI 2 yet killed 22 of 47 people present — a case where a near-minimum eruption produced a near-maximum human cost, because tourists were on the crater floor when it happened.
A Phreatic Blast, and Why It Gave No Warning
Whakaari sits 48 km off the Bay of Plenty coast — the emergent summit of a far larger submarine andesite stratovolcano, most of its bulk hidden underwater, on the northern end of the Taupo Volcanic Arc. For decades its steaming crater and acid lake made it one of New Zealand's signature tourist experiences, reached by boat or helicopter.
The 2019 eruption was phreatic — driven not by fresh magma reaching the surface but by superheated groundwater and hydrothermal fluids flashing explosively to steam. That distinction is everything for warning. Magmatic eruptions usually announce themselves with swelling earthquake swarms and ground deformation for hours or days; phreatic eruptions can fire with almost no short-term precursor, because nothing large has to move. (A later Science Advances study of satellite SO₂ imagery traced the pressurising gas, but that is a reconstruction after the fact, not a siren anyone heard at 2:11pm.)
GeoNet had raised the Volcanic Alert Level from 1 to 2 on 18 November 2019, three weeks earlier, after gas output and tremor increased. But Level 2 means “moderate to heightened unrest” — a description of the volcano's state, not a forecast — and under it the crater-floor tours kept running. After the eruption GeoNet pushed the level to 4, then eased it back to 2 on 12 December once it was clear the activity had not continued (GeoNet bulletin). The question that drove everything afterward was not scientific but human: should anyone have been on an actively unsettled volcano at all?
Whakaari's Eruption Record
Reliable descriptions of Whakaari's eruptions go back to 1826, and Māori oral history records activity long before that. The pattern in our data is remarkably consistent: frequent, small, and almost always steam- or ash-driven rather than cataclysmic.
| Eruption | VEI | Style | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024–2025 | 1 | Minor / phreatic | Low-level ash and gas activity. Near-continuous ash lifted GeoNet's alert to Level 3 on 17 April 2025; it eased to 2 in July, then returned to 3 after two small eruptions in November 2025 — the most recent activity in our record. |
| 2019 | 2 | Phreatic (steam-driven) | The 9 December eruption. A steam-driven blast with 47 people on the island; 22 died and dozens were burned. One of the smallest eruptions on this site by magnitude — and the deadliest single event in its history. |
| 2016 | 1 | Phreatic | A short, mostly overnight eruption on 27 April threw mud and blocks across the crater floor. Nobody was present; it caused no injuries. |
| 2012–2013 | 2 | Dome + ash | Whakaari reawakened after years of quiet with lava-dome growth and intermittent ash plumes — the run-up to the restless decade that ended in 2019. |
| 2000 | 3 | Explosive | A sequence of explosive ash eruptions — one of only three VEI-3 events in the whole record, and the largest of the modern era. |
| 1998–1999 | 2 | Explosive | Ash eruptions from the active crater, typical of its ordinary behaviour. |
| 1986–1994 | 3 | Explosive episode | A long-running eruptive episode that repeatedly rebuilt and destroyed vents on the crater floor. |
| 1976–1982 | 3 | Explosive episode | The most sustained eruptive episode of the last century, carving new craters and reshaping the floor over six years. |
Source: VolcanoDB analysis of Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program records for Whakaari/White Island. A selection of the 42 recorded eruptions; VEI values are from GVP. See the full Whakaari data page and how VEI 2 compares on the explosivity index.
Who Was Responsible? The Court Case — and Its 2025 Reversal
This is where Whakaari stopped being only a geology story. WorkSafe New Zealand charged 13 partiesunder the country's health-and-safety law. In October 2023, Whakaari Management Ltd — the company through which the island's owners licensed tour access — was found guilty of failing to minimise the risk to people brought onto the island; several tour operators pleaded guilty separately. At sentencing in March 2024 the court ordered roughly NZ$10.21 million in reparations across the parties, with the single largest penalty, about NZ$978,000, against Whakaari Management Ltd (ABC News).
The part most summaries stop before: in February 2025 the High Court quashed Whakaari Management Ltd's conviction. Justice Simon Moore ruled that merely owning the land did not make the owners a “PCBU” — a person conducting a business or undertaking — responsible for the safety of the tour activity on it (ABC News). The question of who carries legal responsibility for tourists on an active volcano is, as of writing, less settled than the 2024 headlines made it sound.
Whakaari Is Still Erupting
It is easy to read about 2019 and file Whakaari away as a closed tragedy. It isn't one. It is New Zealand's most frequently active volcano, and it has kept going. GeoNet raised the Volcanic Alert Level to 3on 17 April 2025 as near-continuous ash emissions set in, eased it back to 2 in July, then lifted it to 3 again after two small low-energy eruptions in November 2025. Our record's most recent entry is 2025. The crater that erupted in 2019 has not gone quiet; the people have simply stopped going in.
Can You Visit White Island Now?
Not on the ground. The boat and helicopter tours that landed visitors on the crater floor have not resumed since 2019, and the litigation makes their return unlikely. What still operates, where operators offer it, are scenic overflights — fixed-wing and helicopter flights from the Bay of Plenty that circle the steaming island from the air without anyone setting foot on it. If you want a volcano you can actually walk on in New Zealand, the safer and legal options are on the mainland: the Tongariro and Ruapehu country in the central North Island. Our guide to volcanoes in New Zealand covers those, and for the broader picture of which active volcanoes are genuinely accessible, see our volcano tours guide.
Before You Step Onto Any Active Crater
Whakaari is the reason to ask hard questions before booking any “active volcano” experience anywhere in the world. The useful ones aren't about how spectacular the crater looks:
- What is the current alert level, and who sets it? A monitoring agency rating (GeoNet, USGS, PHIVOLCS) matters far more than a tour company's reassurance. “Heightened unrest” is not “safe.”
- Is the hazard phreatic? If the danger is steam-driven, understand that it may arrive with little or no warning — no amount of monitoring reliably forecasts a phreatic blast to the hour.
- How fast can you get off the hazard?On Whakaari the answer was “not fast enough” — a boat ride from the mainland. Time-to-evacuate is the number that actually protects you.
- Who carries protective gear, and is there a plan? Respirators, hard hats and a rehearsed response are the difference between a close call and a casualty list.
If you've visited Whakaari in the past, or you follow GeoNet's alert bulletins and have a correction or an update on its current status, tell us — this page is kept current against the GVP record and New Zealand monitoring.