Pike River: Flame burns until men come home

The flame will burn until this miner brings all his brothers home. Photo / Herald on Sunday

In his small home in Runanga, one of the men from Pike River burns a gas miner's lamp from the Strongman mine, site of the 1967 tragedy. He will leave it burning until the boys are brought home.

The miner stretches out on his couch. He is restless. There is only one place he wants to be, needs to be. He can't get it out of his head.

For the last nine days, 29 of his workmates have been trapped in the Pike River coal mine.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, he talks as if they're still alive. "Bringing them home." From the moment he found out about the explosion, he has been ready, desperate even, to go underground and bring them out. He's a member of the New Zealand Mines Rescue team, highly trained and prepared for the worst. But not prepared for the waiting.

The miner won't be named in this story. He doesn't want anyone to be angry at what he has to say - he just wants people to understand what the rescue team members are going through and to promise they have done, and will do everything they can do, to bring the Pike River 29 home.

He works as a monitor at the mine; his job is to extract coal while the development crews work on the tunnels. He was off shift when the first explosion happened at 3.44pm, Friday a week ago.

"I went into town to get some takeaways for tea and I saw one of my colleagues from Mines Rescue racing through town. Then I saw police racing out of town and I realised something was going on," he says.

"Then I heard from my wife that something had happened up at Pike. She didn't have a chance to say what it was. I said, 'I'm gone', and went straight to the Mines Rescue base."

He's been working underground for 23 years, 2½ of those at Pike River. He has worked at the Strongman mine, where a relative was killed in an explosion in January 1967 and has been a member of NZMR for 15 years, attending a few incidents but none like this.

"We just train for the day this happens and hope it doesn't. We train in heat, in humidity." After the first blast there was a chance that some or all of the 29 miners had survived. As each day passed, hope faded. But the rescue team had to focus on rescue, on that slim chance ...

Waiting at the Pike River site for the green light, that elusive window of opportunity, was "agonising", the miner said. "I just felt like I wanted to grab a set and run in there and do it," he says. "But we couldn't. We knew all of the factors that were stopping us. We were putting ourselves in the barrel of a gun and someone had their finger on the trigger."

The sign at the access road to the Pike River mine is eerie: "Work safe. Play safe. Home safe." The miner sees it every day he drives to the site where his mates are entombed. Last Saturday, it all got too much for the miner.

"I got very emotional. I broke and I couldn't handle it. I was stood down, I had some counselling and then I was ready again to go in and get my mates out - to get my brothers out.

"All I can see is their faces. I can put their names to their faces and that's hard. Before the second explosion I believed there was still hope.

"I had my gear prepped and ready to go. All I had to do was chuck it on, get briefed and go. We were all prepared, mentally and physically." At another rescue, the wife of a trapped miner started screaming at the rescuers to go underground. Because of that, the rescuers asked not to see the Pike River families when they visited.

"We had to close ourselves off. We wanted to keep the families away from us. We didn't want to see their faces and carry those images with us as we walked up the tunnel. We wanted to stay focused on what we had to do."

All rescuers were checked out by a doctor before they were put into crews to make sure their heart rates, blood pressure and general health was up to scratch for a demanding mission.

After the second explosion the miner was stood down again. "My emotions were running away on me. I was stood down for 12 hours but I was chomping at the teeth to get back up there. All I want to do now is get them out and get some closure for their families."

The miner has spent time with the wives, children and other relatives of his missing workmates including Daniel Rockhouse, one of two men who walked out of the mine after the explosion. Rockhouse's younger brother Ben perished underground. "Daniel's a brave man, a very brave man."

He has also seen his boss, Pike River CEO Peter Whittall. "It was hard to hear him say we couldn't go in, but he knows what's going on in there. He knows the facts," the miner says.

"A lot of people have said we're doing a brave job... and we've had a lot of support. Some people probably think we're not doing enough to get their loved ones out. We think the same. It's gut-wrenching."

News of the second explosion, and the reality that his men were not going to walk out of Pike River, was "gut-wrenching". "It could have been us up there," he says.

"I lit the flame of my gas lamp after I heard ... I'll keep that going until I get those guys out." But he does not have to justify his actions to those 29 "brothers" - he has to justify himself to his two children.

"My youngest is a strong little one. She doesn't want me to go back underground again. And how do you answer that? That's my job, that's my life and I've got to do it."