Editorial: Kinder to let Pike River become tomb

Flames leap from the ventilation shaft at the Pike River Mine. File photo / Mark Mitchell

Chance is remote that any remains would be found.

For nearly a year, it turns out, the Pike River mine could have been made safe to enter. Mine safety officials advised the owner, Solid Energy, last October that the main tunnel could be entered. That advice has been kept from the families of the 29 men killed in the 2010 explosion who have been told that safety was the only consideration delaying an effort to recover their loved ones' remains.

Embarrassing as the advice now made public may be for the board of Solid Energy, it should not be a surprise. The recovery plan announced last September never looked realistic. All going to plan, it would have enabled recovery teams to go no further than 2km along the tunnel where it has been blocked by a rockfall. To get even that far would require seals to be built at stages so that the methane gas could be pumped out and replaced by nitrogen before each stage could be entered.

It was estimated to cost $7.2 million to get as far as the rockfall and quite likely none of the bodies would be recovered. Robotic cameras have revealed no remains in the 1.4km of tunnel they could see. If miners are all thought to have been on the other side of the rockfall, most, if not all, were probably in the maze of workings beyond the tunnel. It is doubtful that any of their remains are intact after the heat and blast of two methane explosions.

All things considered, it would have been kinder to their families to have sealed the mine soon after the second explosion and declared it to be a grave. There was never much prospect of the mine reopening even when state-owned Solid Energy took it over. The nearby Strongman mine has never allowed re-entry to shafts where an explosion killed 19 miners in 1967. But nobody has wanted to dispel the hopes constantly expressed by Bernie Monk, spokesman for the Pike River victims' families, and Greymouth Mayor Tony Kokshoorn.

The Government has come as close as it dares to dashing the hope. The day the Prime Minister conditionally committed $10 million to the re-entry plan he said the chances of reaching the main working were remote. "The advice I have received is that it is very unlikely that the High Hazards Unit would deem it to be safe," he said. Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges doubted anything would be found beyond the rockfall. "There's been fires, there's been floods, there's been explosions, so it has been and probably still is a very unstable environment."

A month later, officials did deem the plan safe but clearly Solid Energy, and possibly the Government, did not deem it necessary to let the families and the public know. It has taken an application under the Official Information Act to discover the truth a year on. It means the company and ministers can no longer invoke safety as an excuse for no action on the re-entry plan, apart from clearing debris from the top of the ventilation shaft. That alone cost $4 million even though the RNZAF did most of the work.

As recently as August, Solid Energy said "potentially fatal risks" were holding up an attempt to re-enter the mine. More recently, the company has blamed new legislation that requires mines to have at least two exits. But that would not stop an effort to recover bodies if it was deemed worth the cost. When the cost is weighed against the remote chance of finding any remains, and the fact that any recovery teams could go only part-way into the mine, it is simply not worth it.

In their hearts the families probably know it. After four years, it would be kinder to let the families accept that the mine is the tomb and ensure the men will be memorialised there.