Pike River Inquiry Phase two: “Charade” for families

Families were told the men had air and water, and would emerge hungry, the commission has heard.

Sonya Rockhouse, photo John Kirk-Anderson/The Press

In gruelling and emotional evidence, families of the Pike 29 have spoken of their desperate search for information in the hours after news spread of the mine explosion, the days of hope, and their devastation at learning critical information had been kept from them.

Tara Kennedy, the partner of Pike contractor Terry Kitchin, was one of seven family members to give evidence on day 14 of the hearings. She spoke of being at home cooking tea for the couple’s three children when her father rang to tell her he had heard on the radio that there had been an explosion at the mine.

She heard nothing directly from the mine company, and so that evening she and two friends drove up the Grey Valley hoping to get to the mine site. Kitchin, an employee of Subtech Contracting, had only worked at the mine for three months, and Kennedy didn’t know where to go. Eventually she found the turnoff but was turned back at a police road block. She went to bed at 3.00am, having still heard no word from the company. The morning after the explosion there began a daily pattern of twice-daily meetings with Pike chief executive Peter Whittall and Superintendent Gary Knowles, where families were given positive messages.

“I knew nothing at all about mines or mining. As a consequence I believed everything I was told by Peter Whittall and Gary Knowles.” Like other family members, she described the “horrendous” meeting on day five after the first explosion, when people erupted with applause after Whittall said Mines Rescue were getting ready to go in, only to be then told there had been another explosion and all the men were now certainly dead.

By then her children – two of whom had birthdays the following day – had created welcome home cards for their father. Kennedy said the disaster, and how it had been dealt with afterwards, had created a “huge mess” in her family’s life. “The kids and my pain and heartbreak, their nightmares, them hating me and blaming me for letting their Dad go and work in the mine … Our lives have been totally ripped apart.”

Lauryn Marden, wife of 41-year-old Francis Marden, recounted a similar tale of confusion and struggle to get information. Francis worked for Chris Yeats Builders, a Pike subcontractor. He had disliked working at the mine but stayed because the money was good and he hoped to be able to leave before too long. After hearing of the explosion from the building company, Lauryn tried calling the mine and the police, to no avail. At midnight she went to Pike’s offices in Greymouth, but still had no confirmation Francis was missing.

At the family meetings the message was that the men had air and water and “not to worry”. However her father, an engineer, told her that from his knowledge of explosions there was probably little chance that Francis would come home. Others were also advised by friends to take a more realistic view than that being promoted at the family meetings with Whittall and Knowles. Carol Rose, mother of 31-year-old trainee miner Stuart Mudge, recalled how her son had often referred to Pike as a “gassy” mine. On the first night she concluded that there had been a gas explosion, and that “the men were probably gone”.

The following day she and her husband Stephen heard through local contacts that the mine was on fire. She therefore expected to be told at the next family meeting that there was no hope. “I was absolutely gobsmacked when Peter Whittall walked in … and proceeded to tell the families that the men could be at one of the fresh air bases and would be hungry when they came out …

“The authorities managed to continue this charade until 24 November [five days after the first blast].”

Rose expressed anger at discovering that the CCTV footage of the explosion, which the families were shown on day four, had been edited so that it did not look as serious as it was. Sonya Rockhouse, mother of 21-year-old Ben, who was killed in the mine, and 24-year-old Daniel, who survived, spoke of driving over the mountains from Christchurch late at night in the search for information. On the way, she heard that her former father-in-law had died, and she feared his heart attack may have been precipitated by seeing the news and realising that two of his grandsons were underground.

She described the November 24 meeting, when families were told of the second explosion, as “pandemonium … There was screaming and yelling, people were directing abuse towards the police, one woman collapsed.” Looking back, “it is heartbreaking to have effectively been given false hope and not be told the reality until the second explosion … I no longer sleep properly. I think about Ben each and every day … He was my baby boy, he was only 21 and he died for nothing.”

Marty Palmer, father of 27-year-old trainee miner Brendon, said he knew that if the men had not come out of the tunnel within 4-6 hours there would be no survivors. As a miner and employee of Pike himself, he was “horrified” at the information delivered at the family meetings, where the impression was given that the men could be sitting somewhere surviving on air and water. Those who understood mining felt unable to speak up at the meetings, where there was always an “intimidating” police presence.

The mine should have been sealed early on to starve it of oxygen, but because of “appalling decision-making” it had blown up three more times, making the task of body recovery much more difficult.

Richard Valli, whose 62-year-old brother Keith died at Pike, had to learn his brother was in the mine from the owner of the hotel where Keith stayed when he travelled up from Southland for work. The Vallis were a mining family, and Keith had spoken of Pike as a “circus” with machines continually breaking down, and workers recruited “off the street”.

Bernie Monk, who has been the high-profile spokesman for the families since soon after the explosion, gave lengthy testimony of his family’s private despair at the loss of their “beautiful sunshine boy”, 23-year-old Michael. Late on the first night Monk was taken aside by a friend who was a very experienced miner and told, “Michael is not getting out alive”. But Monk’s wife Kath would not accept it and hung on every word spoken by Whittall at the family meetings.

Monk said the families had been entitled to a frank appraisal of the men’s chances. Instead, they had been shown an edited video of the first blast, there was no explanation of what the gas readings meant for the men’s survival, they were not told that the authorities expected mass fatalities from the first day, or that a fire was burning underground. Later, footage of an open self-rescuer box and had also been withheld.

Sonya Rockhouse drew applause from families in the public gallery when she closed her testimony with a comment about the potential implications of the sale of the mine. “I don’t see how you can sell something that has 29 bodies that don’t belong to them. The bodies of those men belong to us, the families, and I just don’t see how that can be allowed to happen. It’s wrong on so many levels, mostly morally.”

• On a visit to Greymouth yesterday Prime Minister John Key reiterated his commitment to recovering the bodies, and promised the families that the Government would not transfer the Pike mine licence to a new owner without a “credible” recovery plan.