Pike River re-entry team breaks through into mine drift

Tuesday, 21 May 2019

The Pike River re-entry crew steps into the mine drift. (Video first published on May 21, 2019)

Pike River mine victims' families cheered and shed tears as they watched for the first time the mine being opened for re-entry.

Victims' families attended a private event on Tuesday after efforts to re-enter the mine, where 29 workers were killed in an explosion in 2010, were postponed earlier this month over problems with gas monitoring equipment.

Their nearly nine-year wait ended when the three-person re-entry team opened the door about noon.

One of the first photographs taken inside the Pike River mine when it was re-entered on Tuesday.

Anna Osborne, who lost her husband Milton in the disaster, said it was an amazing feeling. She was thinking of Milton as the crew walked in.

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Further risk assessments will be carried out as work progresses.

* Pike River Mine re-entry scheduled for May 3

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The Pike River Mine drift was first re-entered on May 21, 2019.

* 'We're going in' - Government unveils decision to re-enter Pike River Mine

* Pike River re-entry plan to be revealed

Pike River Recovery Agency chief operating officer Dinghy Pattinson leads his team into the mine on Tuesday.

* The promise to Pike River miners: 'We will not rest and we will never give up. We will return'**

'It was so emotional we just couldn't contain our cheers. I wasn't prepared for just how emotional I was going to get today.'

An emotional Anna Osborne at the Pike River mine re-opening.

Osborne said she and Sonya Rockhouse, whose son Ben died in the mine, both 'cried a heck of a lot more than I thought we would'.

Pike River father Rowdy Durbridge is excited ahead of the Pike River mine drift re-entry.

Rockhouse said the actual moment was a 'little bit of an anticlimax'. 'They did what they had to do and then walked in.'

The crew is being led by Pike River Recovery Agency chief operating officer Dinghy Pattinson, who was part of the team that in 2011 left a note on the seal 170m up the mine access tunnel, promising the men they would return to get them out. The fifth-generation West Coast miner has been a NZ Mines Rescue Service member for more than 30 years.

Pattinson said the event on Tuesday went as planned. The team found the drift in 'really good condition'.

Some families of those who died in the mine in 2010 say Tuesday re-entry was a big step towards finding justice.

The next steps include further risk assessments and re-ventilating the drift up to 170 metres.

Pike River Mine drift when the mine was first re-entered on May 21, 2019.

Flames coming out of a ventilation shaft at Pike River Mine after a fourth explosion in 2010.

Pike River father Rowdy Durbridge at the Pike 29 memorial ahead of the re-entry of the mine drift.

'It's as it was left when Solid Energy sealed it in 2016. We could see the 170m wall with the open door in it up ahead of us,' he said.

'Today was for the families. It's taken eight years and it's the start of a journey. The real work starts now.'

Pike River Minister Andrew Little praised the families' 'tireless efforts' to ensure future mining tragedies might be prevented.

'New Zealand is not a country where 29 people can die at work without real accountability. That is not who we are. And that is why today we have fulfilled our promise,' he said.

There was still much to do, Little said.

'We must find out what happened at Pike River. However long that takes, the recovery project will be done professionally. Most importantly, it will be done safely.'

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday the occasion was 'symbolic', 'keeping in mind that there will be quite a bit of time as work is done to safely continue the entry into the drift'.

Re-entry would 'take a number weeks and months', she said.

Ardern said safety was the number one priority, which the families understood and were being very patient about.

The re-entry is expected to cost $36 million, and it is hoped it will provide clues as to what caused the explosion.