NZ film-maker says new footage shows intact body in Pike River Mine

Saturday, 7 April 2018

Never-before-seen footage from the Pike River mine shows an intact body of a miner lying inside, documentary maker Tony Sutorius​ says.

The video was shot inside the mine four months after the last fire and explosion - a blast which the Government at the time said no bodies could have survived. 

Sutorius plans to include the footage in a documentary he's making about the life of union leader Helen Kelly.

Kelly, who died of lung cancer in 2016, was an advocate for recovering the bodies inside the mine. 

**READ MORE:

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* Minister hands Pike River families the key to the mine access road

* Pike River: Exploring the 'latest' footage and issues surrounding the mine

* Pike River mum: 'What we wanted was, and still is, simple'**

'It's acknowledged, in fact, by the police and the chief executive of Solid Energy that [the footage] does show a fully intact, clothed miner,' he told Newshub.

'He's lying on the ground, he has his knees slightly raised you can see the tread on his boots… Police Commissioner Howard Broad was saying at the same time that this image was shot that all they were was a pile of ashes, and the families just had to accept that there was nothing there and it was time to walk away.

'It wasn't true. If you look at these images down the mine there's wooden pallets, there's plastic buckets, there's rubber hoses. It wasn't an inferno down there, that was simply never true.'

Twenty-nine men were killed at the Greymouth mine in 2010.

The following year video emerged from inside the mine which showed crates and drums fully intact, but the families of the victims were told the footage was taken away from where the explosion happened. 

Last year Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the Government expected the recovery at Pike River mine would be completed by March, 2019.

Ardern said the Government did not believe any health and safety laws needed to be changed to re-enter the mine. 

The final decision on whether to enter lies with the Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry, Andrew Little.