Police hint new Pike investigation possible
Top police officers are preparing to open a new investigation into the Pike River mine explosion but the victims’ families say the move has left a ‘‘sour taste’’.
Bernie Monk has laboured on behalf of some of the families of the 29 men killed when the West Coast mine exploded in November 2010. His son Michael, 23, died in the disaster. Monk said he had been ignored and ‘‘fobbed off’’ in his fight for justice but always knew police would ‘‘turn up back on the doorstep’’.
In 2013, all 12 charges laid against former Pike River Coal boss Peter Whittall were dropped and the families were told there was not enough evidence to pursue manslaughter charges.
Last week, New Zealand’s highest-ranking investigator, Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers, along with Detective Superintendent Peter Read, attended a meeting with the Pike River Recovery Agency in Greymouth to discuss plans to reenter the mine’s drift (access tunnel). Police Commissioner Mike Bush also met with families for the first time since police closed the case in 2013 to ‘‘express police support for the re-entry planning’’, police said in a statement.
‘‘The purpose was to discuss the police role and processes to come, regarding planning for reentry to the drift.
‘‘Those discussions raised the option of a police member being seconded to work closely with the Pike River Recovery Agency, albeit remotely,’’ the statement said.
On November 19, 2010, a methane blast at the mine trapped and killed 29 workers inside, where they remain today. Monk said it was yet to be seen whether police claims that they were open to laying new criminal charges were legitimate.
‘‘We’ve been treated poorly by police since day one and [at a meeting in Wellington in December 2017] we laid it all on the table and let them know there needed to be trust, accountability and transparency. We’ve met a different person every time ... so we have to go back through everything. We’ve all been fobbed off by the authorities who thought this would all just go away but we won’t stop fighting this.’’
Technical experts in ventilation and geotechnical engineering also gathered in Greymouth to work out how to re-enter the mine. There are now three options on the table, including forming a short drift to create a new way of escape.
The second option was entering the tunnel with no second means of escape but with very high levels of safety controls in place, and the third was to create a vertical bore hole, which was previously suggested as a second means of escape.
Police said any new evidence uncovered would be assessed to determine what, if any, relevance it had.
‘‘The families have always considered Pike River a crime scene,’’ Monk said.
The new investigation was reliant on access being gained to the mine’s drift. Re-entry could start at the end of 2018.