It was a day which began like many others. Stuart Dye traces the events before the explosion on Friday afternoon.
The bus taking the miners to work comes early on a Friday.
Mining is a way of life on the West Coast. Most of the 15,000 inhabitants of Grey District have a link to the mines, and know those affected by events at Pike River.
Russell Smith misses the bus
and has to jump in his car to catch up. It's a slip-up which probably saves his life as it means he doesn't join the rest of the miners as they start their shift.
There are at least 30 others about to begin another day beneath ground, gouging their way through rock five times harder than concrete to get to the coal.
Twenty-five are New Zealanders, two are Australian, two British and one South African.
Among them is Joseph Dunbar, a 17-year-old understood to be on his first day working underground. There is expectant father Josh Ufer, whose baby is due in May; there's Malcolm Campbell who is due to marry in less than a month; there's Peter O'Neill, who has been involved in the rescue of miners trapped in floods at Black Reef mine; and there's 60-year-old Alan Dixon, one of the oldest working that shift.
They are fathers, brothers and sons.
Pike River's coal mine and surface facilities are in the Paparoa Range 50km northeast of Greymouth.
A service road turns from the highway and winds into the bush towards the company offices. The miners are dropped here and jump into company transport to drive the rugged road to the mine's portal, a pocket of industry in an otherwise remote landscape.
They switch with the previous shift at 8am.
It is a long journey deep into the mine. The miners are weighed down with equipment and, after travelling part way in vehicles, must walk over uneven, unforgiving ground.
The mine has needed careful methane management since it opened after the gas was found in greater volumes than expected near a fault deep below the range.
A new underground fan had been commissioned just a few weeks earlier and a gas-monitoring system sends a constant stream of information to the central control room.
It was this system that gave the first signal something was wrong on Friday afternoon, when it stopped working. An electrician was dispatched to try to solve the problem.
About this time Daniel Rockhouse, 24, left the rest of the miners about 3km inside the mine at the coal face, about 150m below the surface. He travelled back to refuel a loader about 1.7km into the mine.
Meanwhile, Russell Smith was driving another loader into the mine.
The exact sequence will be pieced together by investigators but it is thought the ventilators stopped working, allowing a build-up of gas. That then ignited, causing the massive blast shortly before 3.45pm.
