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“The water is what saved us,” a helicopter pilot said in court last week, detailing how he and two of his passengers had escaped death by jumping into the ocean when a New Zealand volcano erupted four years ago.

Brian Depauw testified at the Auckland District Court in Australia on Thursday, during the 16-week trial of three tourism companies and three directors charged with safety breaches over the December 9 disaster that took the lives of 22 people.

The Belgium-born pilot was working for tour operator Volcanic Air at the time and had taken four passengers to White Island where the volcano erupted in 2019.

He testified that he and his four German passengers were five of the 47 people on White Island when superheated gasses started erupting. White Island is the tip of an undersea volcano in New Zealand, also known by its Indigenous Maori name, Whakaari. 22 people were killed on that fateful day, while many of the 25 survivors were severely burned.

Depauw was making his first unsupervised flight on the day the volcano erupted, per PEOPLE:

“I looked behind me and saw the plume going up,” Depauw said, before telling his passengers to run. According to the outlet, Depauw shared that he ran 200 meters into the ocean and was at times in darkness underwater as he dived down to protect himself from the hot ash.

“The minute I hit the water, it went black. The ash came and obviously hit us and I couldn’t see anything,” Depauw said, per AP. He told the court that he spent up to two minutes underwater, waiting for the ash to clear, and then found the two passengers who had made it into the water with him, before all three were picked up by an inflatable that was taking survivors to a larger boat.

Depauw described the “panic” and “screaming” he witnessed in the aftermath of the volcano’s eruption, as well as what he saw while helping victims, according to the New Zealand Herald.

“You’d hold them and their skin would just fall off. That was when you realised there were quite a few burn victims” Depauw said.

During his time in the witness box, Depauw said he told everyone that they must follow his lead in the event of an emergency; “If you see me run — I always kind of make a joke — follow me as well,” he said.

“I heard my customer saying should we run now? I looked behind me and saw the plume going up 1,000 or 2,000 feet (305 or 610 meters) high, I saw boulders and debris arcing toward us, so I said: ‘Run, run, run to the water. Follow me,’” Depauw told police in a video statement recorded three days after the eruption and shown to the court on Thursday.

However, two of the pilot’s four passengers didn’t make it to the water and were “burnt quite badly,” Depauw said, per AP. He described how the couples crossed the 200 metres to the water before they were overtaken by ash.

Court photographs showed Depauw’s helicopter was blasted by the force of the volcano off its landing pad and its rotors were bent.

The pilot also said he thought there would be warning signs prior to the volcano erupting and wasn’t aware that the volcano had erupted as recently as 2016.

Each of the companies – including the island’s owners, brothers Andrew, James and Peter Buttle; their company Whakaari Management Ltd.; as well as tour operators ID Tours NZ Ltd. and Tauranga Tourism Services Ltd. – faces a maximum fine of 1,5 million New Zealand dollars (over R17 million) while each of the brothers charged faces a maximum fine of NZ$300 000 (around R3,4 million).

[source:people&apnews]