New Zealand volcano rescuer compares post-eruption landscape to Chernobyl

At least six people are confirmed dead and eight more suspected dead after Monday's eruption of White Volcano, also called Whakaari, a private scenic reserve island about 30 miles off New Zealand's North Island. Police estimate that 47 people, mostly tourists from the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Ovation of the Seas, were on the island when the volcano erupted, and about 30 survivors remain hospitalized with serious burns. Some of those hospitalized are not expected to live.

Russell Clark, a paramedic who flew in one of the helicopters trying to rescue survivors from White Island, compared the scene to something out of "the Chernobyl miniseries," telling TVNZ, "Everything was blanketed in ash."

Richard Arculus, an Australian National University volcanologist, told The Associated Press that the eruption probably wouldn't have just sent rock and ask flying into the air, but also blasted out in a vertical ring close to the ground. "In that crater, it would have been a terrible place to be," he said. "There would have been nowhere safe for you to be hiding."

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Police say 24 of the people on the island during the eruption were Australian, nine were American, five were from New Zealand, four from Germany, two each from China and Britain, and one person from Malaysia. New Zealand's Deputy Police Commissioner John Tims initially said Tuesday that police were opening a criminal investigation into the deaths apart from health and safety inquiries, but police later said "it is too early to confirm whether there will also be a criminal investigation.