New Zealand officials said they’ll begin Friday to recover the bodies of eight people presumed dead on a small island following this week’s volcanic eruption.
Continuing volcanic activity has delayed the retrieval of the bodies on ash-covered White Island, where 47 tourists were exploring the landscape when the volcano erupted Monday.
Along with the eight presumed dead, eight more people were killed and dozens were severely burned by the blast of scalding steam and ash.
Mike Clement, deputy commissioner of New Zealand Police, said the plan is contingent on conditions on the island and weather.
“A lot has to go right for us tomorrow to make this work,” Clement said in a statement released Thursday.
New Zealand medical staff were working round the clock to treat the injured survivors in hospital burn units.
The enormity of the task was clear when Dr. Peter Watson, a chief medical officer, said at a news conference that extra skin has been ordered from American skin banks. Hospital personnel anticipated needing 120 square metres more of skin for grafting onto the patients, Watson said.
Australian tissue banks have sent two square metres to New Zealand.
“Skin is predominantly used in patients who have the most life-threatening burns, usually if they have more than 50 per cent burn over their body,” said Stefan Paniatowski, head of Donor Tissue Bank Victoria.
Patients with that amount of burned skin don’t have enough of it that’s healthy to transplant onto the wounded area, he explained. Additionally, in patients with infections, creating a new wound to transfer their own skin is too risky, Paniatowski said.
White Island, the tip of a mostly undersea volcano that’s about 50 kilometres off New Zealand’s North Island, has been a popular attraction visited by thousands of tourists each year.
New Zealand’s GeoNet seismic monitoring agency on Thursday lowered White Island’s volcanic alert level to 2, noting there’s been no further eruption since Monday, when the level had briefly been raised to 4. Its alert level since late Monday had been 3 on a scale where 5 signifies a major eruption.
A further eruption in the next day still remains a possibility, the agency said, noting volcanic tremors are rising, and steam and mud were being vented regularly.
10 Australians dead or presumed dead
Authorities say 24 Australians, nine Americans, five New Zealanders, four Germans, two Britons, two Chinese and a Malaysian were visiting the island at the time of the eruption. Many were from a Royal Caribbean cruise ship that had left Sydney two days earlier.
WATCH: See eyewitness video of Monday’s volcano eruption
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said 10 Australians were presumed among the dead.
Twelve of the injured Australians were being medically evacuated to Australian hospitals for further treatment, with one patient from there staying in a New Zealand hospital, he said at a news conference Thursday.