Waihi grief after miner dies in pit
Miners across the world, friends and Waihi residents are paying tribute to Tipiwai Stainton who died in a mining accident on Thursday night.
The 29-year-old man was driving a 50-tonne loader in the underground Oceanagold Waihi mine when it rolled.
Flowers have been placed at the entrance to the mine and scattered on trees around the beach town, which has a population of 4700.
Tributes have also been left online. ‘‘We all go underground as brothers . . . it hurts when a brother is missing and not standing with us on the surface,’’ a colleague wrote on social media.
Hundreds in mining communities across the world have changed their Facebook profile picture to a picture tribute of a shovel, a pickaxe and a mining helmet, with the words ‘‘In memory of our fallen miners’’.
A local kaumatua performed an emotional karakia on the front-end loader and a separate one for the mine yesterday morning, Oceanagold Waihi senior community adviser Kit Wilson said.
The mood of the mine’s 300 staff was sombre, he said.
‘‘We have been inundated with messages of support, which makes this unbearable matter a little easier to bear,’’ Wilson said.
It was the first fatality in Oceanagold’s 25 years of operating in New Zealand, but it is not the first fatality at the Waihi mine.
The mine was bought from Newmont Mining in 2015.
The loader remains covered underground while police and Worksafe New Zealand conduct investigations, but it would be retrieved and moved out of the mine as soon as possible.
It is unknown when the mine, which has been running since 2006, will begin operating again.
The loader had gone down a 5-metre by 5-metre tunnel in the mine and tipped after it reached a wider area.
The accident happened about 6.30pm and Stainton was alone at the time.
An underground mine rescue team carried out a search and he was found in the loader early yesterday about 2km into the mine.
The mine’s general manager, Bernie O’leary, said it was too early to speculate about what might have happened.
He confirmed Stainton had been void-filling – which is backfilling waste rock – about 200m below the surface in the 300m-deep mine.
The Correnso gold vein was discovered in 2006 and the mine is between 150 and 300 metres below residential properties in Waihi.