Pike River
‘That photo summed up the despair’
She was alone, didn’t say a word, and he never learned her name.
But Tony Kokshoorn can never forget crouching next to a distraught woman in the Greymouth Civic Centre carpark on November 24, 2010.
The woman, along with other relatives of 29 men trapped since an explosion in Pike River coal mine five days earlier, had just been told there was no hope.
“We were expecting good news that day because we thought they were going to make a re-entry,” Kokshoorn, Grey District’s mayor from 2004 until October this year, said of that devastating 10th briefing.
Then-Pike River boss Peter Whittall started by telling the families there was good news — gas levels had dropped and search and rescue were ready to go in, Kokshoorn said.
Cheers broke out, but Whittall began waving his hands.
“He’s going, ‘Stop, stop, stop. I’ve made a mistake, you’ve taken me wrong’.”
Families were then told the reason gas levels had dropped was because there’d been a second, massive explosion, and there could be no survivors, Kokshoorn said.
“Oh God, it was terrible. It was a combination of that massive expectation that somehow they were going to be rescued and then bang. And you had to come to terms with it, real fast.”
As the devastated families spilled outside, Kokshoorn spotted a woman, distraught and alone, leaning against a wall.
He crouched beside her, one arm around her shoulder, the other clutching her forearm.
No words were said.
“What was there to say? She was just in a state of shock. And when you’re in a state of shock, what do you do?
“You don’t think. She was basically dazed.”
The photo would go on to be part of a portfolio of six which won Herald photographer Mark Mitchell Photographer of the Year at the 2011 Canon Media Awards.
Kokshoorn knew many of the miners who died at Pike River, among them district councillor Milton Osborne.
He didn’t know the woman, and the Herald also couldn’t identify her before publication.
But her pain reflected that of so many, Kokshoorn said.
“That photo . . . it summed up the despair and the realisation that the 29 weren’t coming out. They were dead.”