Pike River Inquiry Phase two: top cop “stuck in the middle”

Counsel for the Pike families suggests that the gravity of the situation was kept from them.

Photo Iain McGregor/The Press

The policeman who was one of the most prominent figures in the mine crisis resisted repeated attempts by the lawyer for the Pike families to gain an acknowledgement that he had lacked the expertise to be incident controller of the complex rescue operation. Superintendent Gary Knowles acknowledged he had no prior knowledge of underground coal mining, but rejected the proposition he had been out of his depth.

Counsel for the families, Nick Davidson, put to Knowles a raft of examples suggesting the gravity of the situation was kept from the families in the days after the blast on November 19. At the first family briefing the morning after the explosion, reference was even made to the recent Chilean mining rescue – despite the fact that, as a gold mine without gases, the Chilean situation was completely irrelevant to Pike. Knowles said “in hindsight” he became aware of that.

The families had been told the men could be holed up in a “clean room” awaiting rescue, but Knowles acknowledged he had no idea of where in the mine such a refuge was. Documents showed that police headquarters knew on the first day after the explosion that there was a fire in the mine, and there was a likelihood of mass fatalities. This was not conveyed to the families. Knowles, who briefed relatives twice a day with Pike chief executive Peter Whittall, said he didn’t know the extent of the fire at that stage, and had no knowledge of the documents referred to.

Davidson said some of the family members knew about the fire from contacts at the mine, and were then going to meetings where the full “pessimism” of the situation was not being conveyed.

Knowles: “When I attended those meetings I told the families what I knew …  And I had standing beside me Mr Whittall, who had 35 years of mining experience, and who had a lot better knowledge of that mine than I do, and that’s not what he was saying.” Davidson suggested to Knowles he had been a victim of the command structure, in which he was removed from both the mine and from the information circulating at Police headquarters. “You were kind of stuck in the middle … Can you see the validity of the families’ concern – that they lost out because of that?”

Knowles still refused to concede: “No I don’t. I received full briefings from my team at the front end.” Although Knowles relied heavily on Whittall’s advice, Davidson revealed that by day four the police had become concerned at the “overly-hopeful” messages Whittall was giving the families, and that Knowles discussed the issue with Commissioner Howard Broad.

Knowles’s team had also been responsible for contacting the next of kin of the missing Pike men, and found the company’s records to be unreliable and out of date. Davidson referred to the gruelling evidence of one father, who learned via relatives two days after the explosion that his son was underground. He tried unsuccessfully to get information from the police in Christchurch and Greymouth, and eventually arrived in a distraught state at Christchurch airport where an airport employee came to his aid. He was taken to airport police, who gained confirmation his son was trapped.

• Phase two of the inquiry, which is focusing on the rescue operation, continues next week.