The Pike River mine’s former health and safety manager feels “blessed” to have told his son he loved him before he died in the explosion that killed dozens of workers 15 years ago.
Neville Rockhouse reflected on the poignant conversation in a discussion on Health and Safety Hub, a podcast series produced by the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA), about what New Zealand has learnt from the tragedy.
“Those were the last words I spoke to him,” he told host Kevin Chambers.
“I had no idea that he was going to be gone later that day. So I was blessed to have that moment.”
With Rockhouse’s own father dying of natural causes hours after the explosion, he recalled how “devastated” his family had been left following the ill-fated day and urged people to set aside their differences with loved ones.
“I think of the others that, perhaps the night before, they may have had an argument with their wife or children,” Rockhouse said.
“I’d encourage everyone out there that they never go to bed angry. Tell the people you love [that] you love them.”
A methane explosion ripped through the underground coal mine on the afternoon of November 19, 2010, resulting in the deaths of 29 miners and contractors.
Rockhouse’s 21-year-old son Ben was among those killed, while his older son Daniel was one of only two men who managed to escape.
The second survivor, Russell Smith, was saved by Daniel, helping his injured colleague resurface from the mine’s tunnel after both were knocked unconscious.
The immense loss experienced by the remote community was amplified by the disaster’s preventability.
A Royal Commission of Inquiry found multiple warning signs were ignored by the mining company, exposing workers to “unacceptable risks” in the pursuit of production.
The report also identified several regulatory and inspection failures by the Department of Labour, now MBIE, drawing an apology from then-Prime Minister John Key to the victims’ relatives and leading Parliament to pass the WorkSafe New Zealand Act in 2013.
While the Act established the Crown entity that now regulates and enforces workplace health and safety law, changes were still taking place within the private sector.
Rockhouse said managers, executives and directors driving large-scale operations can’t address critical risks while “sitting at a desk”, stressing the need to get on-site and validate the efficacy of their systems.
“Everyone’s got a safety management system, okay, but few have fully implemented it,” Rockhouse said.
“You’ve got to be where the rubber hits the road, out in the front end.
“So too do the directors. They have to see what’s going on and understand it. And irrespective of our age and our backgrounds, qualifications, we’re always learning something new.”
Rockhouse said New Zealand continued to wrestle with a “blame” problem that holds individuals back from speaking out and lets workplace accountability slip from the top.
He described the importance of a “trust but verify” safety culture approach; accepting information shared by teams as fact while corroborating with what’s seen firsthand.
“That top-down, bottom-up approach where we meet somewhere in the middle, you’re going to have a pretty robust safety culture by the time you get there.”
In practice, that meant avoiding finger-pointing and giving workers the agency and authority to stop unsafe work and raise concerns.
“If something is not right, don’t do it,” Rockhouse said.
“From a safety professional’s perspective, who does the report writing and collects the data and then does the presentations, I would rather work stop for 15 or 20 minutes and get an issue sorted.”
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