Pike River families asked to choose between two factions

Wednesday, 7 April 2021

The Pike River Recovery Agency team has to tunnel through a Rocsil plug to get to the top of the drift. (Video first published February 2021).

Pike River families are being asked to resign from a group liaising with the Government if they support calls for the re-entry wind down decision to be revisited.

Anna Osborne chairs the Family Reference Group (FRG), which represented 26 of the families and was set up to work with the Government and police on drift re-entry efforts.

She wrote to members asking them to resign if they back another faction, led by father Bernie Monk, which wants the Government to assess going past the roof fall at the top of the drift.

The Pike River Recovery Agency has been working its way down the 2.3km mine access tunnel, or drift, since 2018 with a $52m budget.

Monk's group hopes to recover evidence from the mine’s main ventilation fan, which could hold clues about what caused the first explosion in November 2010. The group says the Government ruled it out without fully assessing the risks or the cost.

* Pike River Recovery Agency reaches rockfall at top of mine tunnel

* New borehole into Pike River mine could investigate cause of explosion

The Pike River mine after the explosion in 2010.

In the letter, Osborne said FRG could not expect to be trusted if those it represented were also “engaged in a campaign to attack the organisations we are trying to work with”.

“Put simply you can’t be inside the tent and outside of it. And right now the biggest gains to be made for truth and justice are inside of the tent.”

Osborne said she did not want to ask the Government for “millions of dollars” or lead the families into false hope that recovering the fan or a full mine re-entry was possible, either from a safety or a financial point of view.

She hoped police had enough evidence to bring a prosecution from the investigations already undertaken.

A group of 11 from the FRG last week met with Andrew Little, the minister overseeing the re-entry. Little reiterated there was no Government money available to extend the agency’s mandate beyond the roof fall. The group issued a statement after, saying 27 families accepted there was no more money to expand the project.

Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little says the Government is not willing to consider risk assessment and cost analysis of recovering evidence from the mine’s main ventilation fan.

However, some families disputed they agreed with the statement, prompting another meeting to be held Wednesday night.

Pive River mother Carol Rose said 45 members from 17 families were at the meeting.

She said 23 of the 29 families indicated they were “not yet ready to walk away”. Some only wanted the feasibility study to focus on the costs and risks of getting to the main fan and others wanted to push further into the mine.

“The Families Group decided to self-fund an independent feasibility study to get a report to present to the Government in the hope that it will consider at least examining the main fan,” she said.

The feasibility study would not impact the existing drift re-entry project, Rose said.

“All families are aware that by supporting this current move, they are not withdrawing support from the Families Reference Group,” she said.

A piece of debris recovered from the Pike River mine drift.

However, the letter from the Family Reference Group to families said they had to choose.

“We have been focused for so long on building unity and it has gained us all so much. But there are now two clear and conflicting approaches being offered to families so we have no choice.”

Osborne said no-one had resigned since the letter went out Wednesday night.

Monk said only two families had told him they wanted the mine sealed up and handed over to the Department of Conservation as planned once drift re-entry was finished.

He, along with Pike River father Dean Dunbar, has been investigating the cause of the disaster with the help of electrical engineer Richard Healey.

The families had told Little at the meeting he had reneged on a promise made when the agency was set up in 2017 that an assessment on recovering the mine workings would be done once the drift recovery was well advanced.

“We are not saying there are no risks, we are saying they can be managed. It’s not simple, but it is straight-forward,” Healey said.

Little previously said the Government would not consider doing a risk assessment and cost analysis of going past a roof fall blocking the mine workings.

The mine’s geotechnical strata was “inherently unstable” and the technical challenge of getting past a roof fall blocking the mine workings would be phenomenal, he said.