Nothing had been heard from the men since an explosion deep underground yesterday afternoon.
Worried families of the men gathered at the entrance to the Pike River Coal company's mine, 46km east of Greymouth.
...Early this morning, Mr Kokshoorn said Greymouth was hoping for a repeat of the Chilean mining rescue, in which 33 miners were rescued after 69 days trapped underground.
"It's serious stuff but we are not giving up hope. The rescue crew will be in there within hours."
...Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall said the missing men were probably between 2km and 2.5km into the mine, although because the mine drills into the side of a mountain, they were probably only about 120m below the surface.
He said a coal-gas explosion was the most likely cause of the blast.
...Veteran West Coast journalist Paul McBride, 56, of the Greymouth Evening Star, said that after looking at the damage he captured on film, "I would say the outcome will not be good".
The mine entrance looked "reasonably normal", but the escape portal showed obvious signs of a "pretty big fire and explosion".
I was curious about this mine, because I visited nearby Paparoa National Park in 2008. It has great coal, apparently, but they are practically inside the National Park, so environmental concerns are very high. (Do what you want with the rock, but don't mess with the wekas!) The location is hard to reach, too, and why they are shipping the coal to Lyttelton rather than Greymouth is hard for me to fathom (just doesn't seem economical to ship it over the mountains).
This news story came out just yesterday, just prior to the explosion:
The Pike River Coal Ltd mine has great promise but has disappointed investors and only has funding until December.
The underground mine developed on the edge of a national park on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island has been held up as an example of a mine development in a sensitive environment that targets a proven coal seam of quality coal with upside potential from a second seam below.
...Pike River's development has been slow. The mine encountered a rockfall in its ventilation shaft in February 2009 which cost $7 million to fix and it faces a bill of between $700,000 and $1 million to overhaul continuous mining machines it has had trouble with.
The mine, which is near the historic mining settlements of Blackball and Dobson, has pushed back mine development timetables, cut production targets and has been back to shareholders several times for more money.
...The mine is in inaccessible hills 46km northeast of Greymouth, covered by 300-year-old rimu trees on land owned by the Department of Conservation, the northern part of which is in the Paparoa National Park.
The Pike River Coal project has taken decades to get off the ground but shares were offered for sale to the public in February 2007. By February this year the first shipment of premium hard coking coal was shipped from Port Lyttelton to a life-of-mine customers Gujarat NRE.
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