Ceremony for families of Pike River Mine victims underway

May 3, 2019

The Prime Minister is also joining the families.

A ceremony for the families of the 29 men who died in the 2010 Pike River Mine explosion is underway.

Over 100 family members along with the Prime Minister and mining officials have gathered at the mine where the re-entry was meant to take place today.

After unexpected oxygen readings were confirmed yesterday re-entry plans were ditched to protect everyone's safety.

The decision was hard to swallow for family members but knew it was for the best.

“Had they not have done that they could have very well have been in the same situation as our men.

"We know that mining is a pretty unpredictable industry, we all know that this can be done and can be done safely, so they made the absolute right call when the atmosphere wasn’t quite at the right condition to proceed,” said one of the Pike River widows, Anna Osborne.

Those conditions were picked up by the mine's tube bundle system.

Tubes run four kilometres up the mountain, down into the drill holes and detect oxygen levels.

Technology Dinghy Pattinson of Pike Recovery Agency, says could have helped if it was around in 2010.

“If they’d been sampling back then - most definitely they would have known what was there but you have to be prepared to make those decisions, And probably if they had made the decision we had yesterday to actually stop doing what they were doing then, those 29 men could still be alive today,” he said.

Now they have to find what has caused the delay but the re-entry minister doesn't think it will change the project’s $36 million dollar budget.

“We have external experts analysing information so we can make a judgement call about how we respond to the information we’re getting from the monitoring points at the moment.

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“This won't add a lot of extra cost, it’s just extra time taken, and in the bigger scheme of things it won’t be significant,” said Mr Little.

The families have now gathered at the mine where their 29 men still remain, for a ceremony in place of the planned re-entry.

It's not the trip to the mine they had expected but hope hasn't been lost.

“It was a slight glitch in the works yesterday but this is still a celebration," says Anna Osborne.

“Its going to happen, the drill holes have already been drilled, they just have to continue on a few more so I’m still going forward with a smile on my face knowing that that this is going to happen and entirely grateful for all the work that has gone on behind the scenes to date,” she said.


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