Filmmaker claims footage shows Pike River body

GREYMOUTH: A documentary maker has revealed film taken inside the Pike River Mine shows the fully intact body of a miner.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 2010 disaster in which 29 workers lost their lives considered evidence which did not become public and is subject to an embargo preventing its release. It is believed the footage may be from this.

Tony Sutorius says the video was shot inside the mine four months after the last fire and explosion.

He wants to include the footage in a documentary he is making about the life of union leader Helen Kelly, who fought for the Pike families.

He says the body is lying on the ground. ‘‘He has his knees slightly raised. You can see the tread on his boots.’’

He said at the time the image was shot, police were saying all there was in the mine was a pile of ashes and the families just had to accept there was nothing there and it was time to walk away.

‘‘It wasn’t true. If you look at these images down the mine, there’s wooden pallets, there’s plastic buckets, there’s rubber hoses. It wasn’t an inferno down here. That was simply never true.’’

The spokesman for some of the Pike River families, Bernie Monk, said the families had known about the footage for a long time.

‘‘The coalition Government have always said they wanted transparency on all this, so we’ll give them transparency and we’ll show them some of the things we’ve got.’’

Mr Monk said the footage was brought up in the commission.

Two men in the mine drift escaped the initial explosion. The 29 men deeper in the mine are believed to have died immediately, or shortly afterwards.

There were three more explosions within the mine before it was sealed nine days later. The remains of the men who lost their lives have not been recovered.

The Labour Government has created the Pike River Recovery Agency to work with the Pike River families and others to plan for decisions on the manned reentry of the Pike River mine drift.