Pike River mine still too dangerous

Prime Minister John Key arrived in Greymouth this morning. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Levels of dangerous gases at the Pike River mine are still high and rescuers are unable to enter to recover the bodies of 29 trapped men, police said this afternoon.

Tasman district police commander Gary Knowles told media gathered in Greymouth today that the environment inside the mine needed to be made safe.

"We are still taking air samples. My understanding is half an hour ago the samples had not dropped and there was an extreme risk of sending people underground," he said.

Pike River CEO Peter Whittall also told media conditions in the mine did not appear to have changed much, despite yesterday's explosion.

"That means we still have a large reservoir of gas," he said.

"That means the situation yesterday could happen again, today, tomorrow or the next day. We need to take action now to make the mine safe."

He said decisions on how to do that would be made quickly.

"We have given an undertaking to families we would bring the boys back to them so we have to make decisions quickly."

But he said the recovery operation would take time.

"This is not going to happen in the next couple of days, it will happen as quickly as we can. If the mine is safe at some stage in the near future it will still be days or weeks to get some closure for the families involved."

Mr Whittall said the third robot - sent from Western Australia - was on site and was ready to be deployed into the mine.

"It has a longer cable and we will expect to get to the end of the tunnel, which is 500 metres up the tunnel further than Daniel [Miner Daniel Rockhouse - who escaped the first blast] was."

Mr Knowles said there were a number of options for stabilising the mine so the miners' bodies could be recovered.

"We are looking at those options. How do you stabilise an environment that is full of gas, how do you neutralise the gas so you can send people in."

He said there was equipment in Queensland that could be used to neutralise the mine environment and the Air Force was on stand-by to fly to New Zealand if experts decided that was the best option.

Second explosion demonstrated risk

Mr Knowles said yesterday's second, more intense, explosion showed the risk involved in sending teams into the mine.

"It's an example of where everything was coming together and within minutes the whole environment changed," he said.

"It's a highly volatile environment. [The second blast] was an example where we where lining things up, we believe the environment was stabilising and in less than an hour it changed."

Mr Knowles stood by rescuers' decision not to enter the mine after the first blast on Friday.

"This is really a very serious situation and I took advice from experts and I'm glad I did take that advice, I think we all are."

Mr Knowles said he was at the mine site when the second explosion took place.

"Having viewed it myself it was an extreme explosion and based on that we genuinely believe no-one survived."

He said it was an extremely tragic event to have to tell the community.

"It's taken a toll on me personally."

Mr Knowles said he had not focused on some negative feedback about his leadership of the mine operation.

"When people doubted my ability to run this operation, I was not going to focus on that," he said. "I'm staying here until we solve this situation."

Keeping the lights on

Pike River chairman John Dow also addressed media on the tragedy.

Mr Dow said Pike River had a reputation as a safe operator.

"No mining company sets out in life to have these kinds of things happen," he said.

He said it was not the time or the place to discuss the business implications of the tragedy.

"But we do have to keep the lights on and the company running.

"Pike's board will be meeting tomorrow morning and after that meeting there will be further details about what options there will be for Pike as a consequence.".