Rescue operation at gold mine

Rescue teams were last night searching through 40km of tunnels in a Waihi gold mine after a large frontend loader with one person on board rolled down a shaft, police say.

Almost four hours after the 6.30pm incident in the Correnso underground mine rescuers had not made contact with the driver.

A police spokesperson said the mine incident controller was leading the rescue effort of the underground mine rescue team and police were coordinating at the scene. All mining activities in the area have halted.

The senior community adviser at Oceana Gold in Waihi, Kit Wilson, said late last night that the emergency team had entered the mine.

He said searchers did not know if anyone had been injured.

All they knew was that a loader had been involved in an incident and the driver was not responding. They had some idea of where the loader was, but had a lot of equipment and tunnels to deal with.

Mine management were alerted when a supervisor called the company and said one of the workers could not be reached by radio.

Northern Ambulance Communications team leader Ngaire Jones said an ambulance was at the scene waiting for a patient to be brought out of the mine.

“We believe there is someone trapped . . . fire are organising rescue and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter from Auckland are on the scene.”

Emergency services were called at 6.35pm and the ambulance had been waiting since 7.15pm, she said.

Wilson couldn’t confirm police and ambulance reports that the loader had rolled and someone was trapped.

A Northern Fire Communications spokesman referred inquiries to police.