Camera man got trapped inside erupting volcano and lived to tell the tale

10 December 2023 , 07:53

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Michael Benson spent two days and nights trapped inside a volcano vent before he was rescued (Image: imdb)

A movie camera man had a lucky escape after being rescued within an inch of his life from inside a steaming volcano vent.

42 year-old Michael Benson was the last of three men to emerge from the dense, choking smog inside the crater on the flank of Kilauea Volcano after being trapped for two days and nights. So thick was the fog that Jeffrey Judd, a Hawaii Volcanoes National Park ranger who helped with the rescue, said they "never even saw him in the steam, but the rope went tight and there he was".

In November 1992, Benson and 31 year-old fellow camera man Chris Duddy were shooting aerial footage of the terrain for Paramount Pictures' psychological thriller "Sliver" when their helicopter crash landed on the floor of the Pu`u O`u vent, narrowly missing a bubbling lava pool.

The Kilauea volcano is one of the most active volcanoes in Hawa'ai and is thought to have last erupted in September of this year (Getty Images)

A Fire Department rescue mission managed to retrieve the pilot from the crater only a few hours later, but Benson and Duddy were left to try to scale its 150-foot-high interior wall. Duddy made it to the top, but Benson remained stranded 60 feet below the rim for another night.

"At night it was like a light show," Benson told the Chicago Tribune. "The lava sounded like surf pounding against the shore". Heavy rain, fog, and fuming from the vent created a "whiteout" effect that completely obscured the rescue pilots' line of vision beyond more than a few feet and turned the operation into a high-stakes "game" of blind man's bluff.

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But a short break in the weather allowed the helicopter pilot to catch a momentary glimpse of Benson struggling below. "There were a few seconds when they could see where he was, when the fumes separated, so that's where they lowered the net," recalled ranger Richard Rasp.

They fished blindly in the steam with a rescue net, which Benson was eventually able to scramble into. After being greeted by his wife Stephanie, Benson was admitted to the intensive care unit of Hilo Hospital in a stable condition.

He had suffered inflammation of the lungs from sulphur dioxide in volcanic fumes, chemical pneumonia, and dehydration. Ironically, the volcano scenes wound up being cut from the final release of Sliver.

Mizy Judah Clifton