Anna Leask: Remembering the Pike River tragedy

The Pike Families Memorial, in memory of the 29 miners killed in the Pike River coal mine disaster, situated on Logburn Road, West Coast. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Opinion

Reporter Anna Leask was part of the team that covered the Pike River disaster for the Herald in 2010. Today on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy she reflects on what it was like to be in Greymouth at the time.

Within an hour of the news breaking I was on a flight to Christchurch.

A mine had collapsed and up to 30 men were trapped inside, deep underground. It was unfathomable. The entire flight I was convinced that by the time I landed it would be all over, some kind of false alarm, an overstatement by police and we had jumped the gun.

That wasn't the case. It still wasn't the case when I arrived in Greymouth at 1am after driving across the South Island.

In the first few days there was hope. The rescue effort was enormous and there was a sense of optimism that, like in Chile just months earlier, our miners would walk out emotional and exhausted by unscathed and alive.

The number of reporters grew by the hour in the first few days and poor old Greymouth was besieged. The level of anxiety and tension grew by the hour as we waited for news.

On day five I was waiting at the police station for the usual afternoon briefing. I was with two opposition journalists and as we chatted our phones started to ring. Get to the Civic Centre - they're all dead.

We got there just in time to hear the screams. Ten minutes into the daily briefing for the families came the worst news; there had been a second explosion that no one could have survived.

The lives of 29 men, their partners, children, parents and so many other loved ones had just been destroyed. And their grief was raw and almost tangible as they left the building.

Some of the families left immediately, others comforted each other, and there were a few that turned on the media. We were "vultures" and "maggots" and we needed to "f*** off".

They were right on one hand, we were witnessing, reporting and filming their darkest moment - letting the world intrude as they fell to pieces and competing to get the best angle. But on the other hand, the world needed to know what had happened at Pike and it was our job to tell the story.

The next few hours and days were hard going. The feeling of hopelessness around Greymouth was suffocating and I hated being there.

Five years has passed but Pike River and the anguish that came with it feels like it was yesterday. It is something I will never forget, and something I hope you all take the time to remember today.

Anna Leask is the senior police reporter at the New Zealand Herald.

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