The court is nowhere to explore volcanic hazards

Leilani Hopkins had just left Whakaari / White Island when it erupted and got this photo.

Opinion: Will science be put to trial next year when the Crown Research Institute, GNS Science, joins nine other organizations facing charges of health and safety violations related to the deaths that resulted from the Whakaari / White Island outbreak?

I do not wish. I had a deep and negative reaction when I first heard that the agency responsible for monitoring volcanic activity and setting alert levels across the country, was facing legal action from another government agency, WorkSafe.

I was immediately reminded to meet the Italian seismologist Dr. Giulio Silvage, the former director of the National Seismological Center in Rome, who, along with five other scientists, was accused of manslaughter in connection with the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake that killed 309 people.

The scholars, accused of underestimating the risk of a major earthquake hitting the city, were subsequently overturned on appeal and the Italian Supreme Court eventually overturned.

Read more: * Scientists must welcome charges against the agency regarding Whakaari / White Island – if that helps improve early warning systems * Both pilot and brother of tour guide Whakaari against WorkSafe charges * A new alert system would have issued a warning about Whakaari / White Island Whakaari / White Island Eruption *: Few Clues Before Disaster Struck, Experts Say

But I remember Selvaji recounting the hell he went through as he faced the prospect of spending six years in prison and the end of his career.

The issue of Whakaari is very different in nature. We don’t yet know what exactly the criticism of GNS Science is, but we do know that the agency raised the island’s volcanic alert level in the weeks leading up to the eruption of the volcano last December.

Perhaps the crux of the matter is the nature of alert information and how it is published and interpreted by tourism operators. Why didn’t that prompt them to cancel their tours?

As with the L’Aquila case, the disagreement is the nature of uncertainty and communication about risk and not the science itself. After living in many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, kiwi has pretty much realized that scientists cannot predict these kinds of dangerous events.

An incomplete process review is needed to assess volcanic hazards, determine alert levels and inform decision-making in those high-risk areas in which many of us live and work.

But the appropriate forum for this is the closest thing to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terrorist attacks, whose aim is to explore problems and address failures so that a horrific crime of this kind does not happen again.

Professor of volcanology at the University of Auckland, Shane Cronen, is right that trying to uncover what went wrong doesn’t have to be about blaming.

He wrote recently, “It should be about bridging the gap between societal expectations of hazard information and how it is used or imposed on dangerous volcanoes.”

Instead, in the face of responsibility for a tragedy, GNS Science will present its attorneys like everyone else facing the charges.

Seismologists did not shout in the aftermath of the deadly Christchurch earthquakes because New Zealand was in no hurry to blame them. They learned how to communicate more effectively and suggested innovative ways to cope with earthquake risks. We are all better off for that.

There is no court of law place to explore these issues regarding volcanic hazards. We need to make sure this happens the same way, elsewhere and in full view of the public.

Robert Kitchen / Stuff

Columnist on the science of things Peter Griffin

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