NZ miner shares survivors' joy, pain

Brant Webb waves from the back of an ambulance after being rescued. Picture / Reuters

Gary Haddow knew first-hand how the rescued Tasmanian miners would have been feeling yesterday.

Two months ago the West Coast miner was given another chance at life when he survived a coalmine accident which claimed the life of a colleague.

Mr Haddow was trapped 30m underground for seven hours by a rockfall in a coalmine near Greymouth that killed Robert McGowan.

Mr Haddow said he imagined the rescued miners would have mixed emotions.

"They have lost a work colleague and a workmate, as I have," he told the Herald.

"I can imagine how they are feeling now, how their families are. But then knowing their colleague's dead - that is a huge thing to feel - and the family that has lost a husband, partner, son."

Mr Haddow said it would be a "natural feeling" for the miners to be asking why their colleague had died when they had lived.

Mr Haddow survived by hanging on to a roof peg 2m above the floor as the mine flooded with water after the blasting accident at the Tillers Mine, near Greymouth.

With the ordeal for the Tasmanian miners now over, attention is turning to safety surrounding the lucrative gold mining operation.

The Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), which represents 700 workers at mines throughout New Zealand, is largely comfortable with New Zealand safety standards but says there will always be serious risks.

"I think the key thing when it comes to underground mining is that it is a very dangerous occupation. There is an inherent lack of safety in it," said EPMU national secretary Andrew Little.

"I think one of the great unknowns is the geological conditions of a lot of the areas and when you get something like an earthquake that has happened in Tasmania, it's hugely unpredictable about what is going to happen down in an underground mine."

"It is a difficult job and certainly not everyone can do it. [Miners] earn their crust, there is no question about it. We have got to make sure the guys that do that work know, with a reasonable degree of confidence, they are going to come out again and go back to their homes."