The seven-year-old twin daughters of Paul and Mary Singh are still waiting for their parents to come home.
By Audrey Malone and Sam Kelway
The couple was travelling around the South Pacific on Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas. They paid for a day trip to Whakaari/White Island on 9 December 2019, when it erupted. They have subsequently died.
"They sometimes ask very innocent questions, like, 'Are they going to come back?' and I don’t have an answer for them,” Vick Singh says in a Zoom call from New York.
Vick is Paul and Mary’s nephew, and they were his legal guardians when he moved to the United States to study.
As a result of the fatal trip, three children — a 12-year-old boy, alongside their twin daughters — were orphaned, and now live with an uncle in Atlanta.
“The son, he understands everything. He’s older, so he’s absorbed this, but it’s still tough for them.”
A photo taken moments before the eruption shows the couple, arms wrapped around each other, smiling, and plumes of white gas in the background.
When the volcano blasted into the ether, both Paul and Mary, like most others on the island at the time, were badly burnt. The pair were rescued from the island and taken to Middlemore Hospital, where doctors worked tirelessly on the pair. Their children were with Mary’s mother on Ovation of the Seas in Tauranga.
Vick was the first family member to arrive into the country, flying from India where he was on holiday. Police escorted him from the airport to the burns unit.
“I went and saw my uncle. He was covered in wounds. The burns were in bandages and then I was OK because I could still see his face, his hair.
“I was trying to stay confident and positive that he would recover.”
His aunt was faring a lot worse. Mary had 72 per cent burns to her body, and the doctors were considering whether or not to amputate some parts of the body.
“So, I could not bear that, I could not hold up to that conversation and I actually fell unconscious and right there in the hospital became unconscious.”
Mary died just before Christmas. Paul regained consciousness after that. Hhowever, Middlemore advised the family not to tell him of his wife’s death initially, just that she was unwell. It was so that Paul would keep fighting. Later, when it looked like he wasn’t going to live much longer, the family told him.
“He was conscious, and could make eye contact, he could move his lips. He couldn’t really speak much. It was very tough in the last few days for us and our family.”
The Singhs are in the process of suing Royal Caribbean and ID Tours New Zealand Limited – the travel brokerage company for day excursions in New Zealand.
The family wants accountability for Paul and Mary’s death.
“I felt like they were not fully informed. They had no knowledge about where they were headed and whether it was even an active volcano site and then with geothermal activity, which was escalated, I felt like the operator should have cancelled.”
ID Tours New Zealand Limited have been contacted for comment, but have not provided a response.
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