Pike River Coal CEO Peter Whittall speaks about explosion.
REPORTER
to WHITTALL: “What do you understand the
situation to be”? WHITTALL – “Yes I can
confirm that we have had an incident at the mine site and the nature of the
incident would appear to be an explosion. We have had our afternoon shift
underground and we have had a couple of those employees and we have had two men
return to the surface and they have been interviewed and trying to determine
the nature and full extent of the incident.
QUESTION “Have
they told you the nature of the incident”. WHITTALL - Yes. One of the employees
has said he felt an explosion underground and then since then he has walked
from the mine with another employee.
QUESTION “Any idea of the cause
of the explosion”? WHITTALL – “No, we don’t have any more details at this stage”.
QUESTION “We understand some
people weren’t working at the mine last week because of overheating issues. Is
that right”? WHITTALL – “No that wasn’t our mine at all actually, I understand that
there may have been overheating in another mine on the coast but that wasn’t at
Pike River Coal.
QUESTION “Why were the management
underground, was there some sort of safety review, safety briefing. WHITTAL “No
the management ... it just happened on the afternoon of Friday in normal work
hours and the management of the mine were at the mine site so the normal crew
were underground so that involves the general face workers and section leaders
and a shift co-ordinator and the general manager was still at the mine site
because of the hours he works and because and the management team were all on
site because the incident occurred in the afternoon.
QUESTION “Ok, can you explain the
topography. I understand you go in horizontally – you approach it horizontally –
so how does that work. WHITTALL-Yes that’s right we go up adrift, and slightly
upgrade to the mine site, from the portal – the entrance to the mine and then
the mine itself is a couple of 100 metres up from the entrance – up into the
mine about 2.5 kms.
QUESTION “Ok, what kind of
support is Pike River giving to families at this time”? WHITTALL – Well at the
moment we are still trying to determine the nature of that. We have all the
emergency services on site and we have our human resources department onsite
also at the moment determining which employees have been affected ...
QUESTION “So we don’t know
anything about the injuries yet”? WHITTALL – “No the two men who came out of
the mine site are being treated for injuries but they both walked out under
their own steam and the nature or the extent of any other injuries to any other
employee I can’t really determine at this stage”.
QUESTION “What other injuries did
they have”? WHITTALL – “I can’t give you any other comments on that at the
moment – I don’t know.”
QUESTION “So there’s absolutely
no communication at all”?WHITTALL – “No, when the incident occurred the
communications underground were terminated if you like – there were electrical
communications – and at this stage there was ... there is some communication
because the employee who did walk out first rang the surface and said, “That I’ve
ah ... that I believe there’s been an explosion underground and I’m walking out
of the mine” so there is some communications but we haven’t had any further communications
with those that are underground”.
QUESTION “Any idea how long it is
likely to be before you have some idea on what has happened”? WHITTALL – No I
am getting regular updates from the mine site and I have that full management
team on site so we have all the emergency services and they are there now
determining what course of action to take – to enter the mine or not enter the
mine at this stage and to determine the extent of the incident.
Further live interview of Peter WHITTALL several hours following report of explosion at mine
Reporter – Good evening.
We start tonight with a story breaking out of the west coast this evening. A number
of miners are unaccounted for after an explosion at the Pike River Mine at 4.30
pm this afternoon. What we have been told is that about 30 miner’s tags are
still hanging on the board outside the mine.
Emergency services have arrived at the mine which is 50 kilometres
north-east of Greymouth. There has been no communication with the miners since
the explosion. I am joined now by Mining Minister GERRY BROWNLEE in Christchurch and the Chief Executive of Pike
River PETER WHITTALL, in Wellington.
REPORTER Firstly
if I can start with you Peter Whittall? Peter we have just been told that one
person is dead – can you confirm this? PETER WHITTALL No I
have not had any reports of that at all. We have had two mines who have walked
out of the mine and are currently being spoken to and treated on the surface.
They walked out under their own volition. And we have had no communication with
anyone else underground at this stage.
REPORTER – We have had
varying accounts Peter – can you tell us, can you confirm how many people are
trapped underground? PETER WHITTALL – Well at
this stage I wouldn’t say that there are men trapped underground. There’s ah,
there’s 27 men (who) were on shift underground and we have had the two men walk
out and the others are still unaccounted for underground but whether they’re
trapped or choosing to stay underground and shelter from whatever the extent of
the incident it is – we can’t confirm at this stage.
REPORTER – Do you know if
they are still alive though? PETER WHITTALL – We haven’t
had any communication with them at all.
REPORTER – There’s no way
you can communicate with the miners at all or is it just at the moment you
haven’t heard from them? PETER WHITTALL – Ah no,
when the incident occurred at about 3.45 (pm) is when we lost communications
with the underground workings. Ah there was some communication around the pit
bottom area of the mine and one employees did contact the surface. Ah he was
the closest to the surface at the time and he has subsequently walked out of
the mine. So there was communication to a part of the mine but at this stage we
can’t determine if the communication to the rest of the mine is still
operational and we haven’t been able to communicate to anyone elsewhere in the
mine.
REPORTER – What did the
miner say that came out of the mine? Have you or has anyone else had a chance
to speak to him yet? PETER WHITTALL – No – one
of the miners was able to confirm that he believed that an explosion had
occurred – ah as he was working alone he wasn’t able to say what the extent of
it was or what the effects were on the rest of the mine. Ah - and the other man
was working further out of the mine and hasn’t been able to give us any further
information.
REPORTER – Do you know
how big this blast was? Do you know what caused it? What triggered it? PETER WHITTALL – No at
this stage we don’t have any of that information. Ah we know that ah – we believe
that an incident has occurred from the evidence at the mining site and talking
to this employee ah but at this stage we are still briefing rescue teams and
they will be looking at entering the mine to determine the extent of the
incident.
REPORTER – Our sources
tell us Peter that there are miners trapped underground and that are also
people there from management. Is that your understanding? PETER WHITTALL – Ah the
men who were underground were a range of employees. The senior management of
the mine were all on the surface and were working in their offices at about the
mine at the time. The men underground are about half and half of Pike employees
and local contractors doing general contract work underground. They are a range
of experienced miners and mine deputies and the shift co-ordinator is also
underground at the time.
REPORTER – Do you
personally know any of these trapped underground Peter? PETER WHITTALL – Of the
Pike employees I would know all of them. I personally know every employee in
the company. And of the contractors I would know many of them. At this stage I
am still waiting to be supplied with a list of all the employees who are
underground. I know what the shift is and who generally the men are on that
shift and I am waiting to get a full list of all employees involved.
REPORTER – Do you know
when the last time it was that anyone did hear from the miners – was it before
they went underground? PETER WHITTALL - They started their shift early in the
afternoon and the incident – or when we first lost communications with
underground was at about quarter to four and at that stage we didn’t know if
there was an incident or not – ah we can lose communications from time to time
for a number of reasons – a failure of electrical components etc. Our first
communication that we had underground was at about 4.10 pm when one of the
employees rang the mine – range the surface and said that there had been an
incident and then he has walked from the mine and then since that time, at
about 4.10pm, we haven’t had any direct communication with any employees
underground.
REPORTER – Alright Peter
Whittall – thank you very much indeed.
WHITTALL’S FIRST OFFICIAL PRESS CONFERENCE
Good morning everyone and thank you for coming in and
sharing what’s obviously a strong interest in the health and welfare of our employees
that are under ground at the moment.
What I would like to start with is to go back
over some of the facts of what we know. I am very well aware that there has
been a lot of speculation and I hardly recognise some of the stories and media that
I have been reading myself, so I would like to set straight some of the facts
that we do know.
Yesterday afternoon, at about quarter to four (3.45pm) we
lost communications with the underground mine. That’s not really unusual - it
could have been a technical fault - and a man went into the mine to determine
what had gone wrong while the rest of the crews were underground working. He found a machine parked in the roadway and
saw what he thought was one of the employees lying on the ground and he
retreated from the mine. Since that time that employee recovered sufficiently
and walked out of the mine itself and has since been treated in hospital and is
just on general observation.
About half an hour after that we had a call from another
employee underground to say that he had believed he had been involved in an
explosion, he had been knocked to the ground, and was ringing up to say what
had happened to him and that he was making his way out of the mine. He did do
that and he walked out and actually came out at about the same time as the
other employee. Ah both treated for minor injuries and both are recovering in
the Grey Hospital.
Since that time however we haven’t had any communication
with the rest of the work force underground – ah we have another ah 29
employees underground – so the two that came out plus the 29. They are a mixture
of Pike River Coal employees, about 16 employees and another 13 contractors
from various local contracting companies around Greymouth.
There hasn’t been any communication available to the mine since
the ah, what, what at the time was believed to be an explosion and since then
we have confirmed there was an explosion on the evidence that we can see from
outside of the mine.
Ah no one has been
able to go underground at this stage ah because risk to personnel going into
the mine is still too great and I will come back to that in a moment.
The evidence we do have is that we’ve seen evidence of an
explosion on the surface of the mine around the ventilation shaft which would be
the typical place that an explosion path would go because that’s up the return
airway of the mine and from the damage on the surface we can’t determine the
strength, or magnitude or extent of the damage underground or indeed what
impact that would have had on the employees.
At this stage we have been trying to allow mine rescue
services to go underground. We have a large number of different services at the
mine site which the Police Superintendent will be talking to you about. We have
mines rescue up there. They can’t go underground at the moment because their
primary consideration is their own safety and also the safety of the men
underground that they don’t put them in further jeopardy by initiating rescue
when conditions aren’t ideal for that rescue.
So they’re assessing ventilation at the mine and we’ll determine at some
stage during the day as to whether it’s safe or not for them to enter after
which they will seek out and recover the employees who may be trapped or may be
waiting underground to be recovered to the service.
That’s really the extent of what we know.
The advantage we
have in recovering from this mine is that it’s a tunnel mine, not a shaft mine,
although we do have one ventilation shaft that isn’t the typical ?? or ?? from
the mine and we have a number of ah, sorry – the men are able to walk in and
out the mine so therefore the rescue service can also walk in and out of the
mine so it’s not like a deep underground mine where the men are trapped and
have to be hoisted out or anything else.
We are able to affect the rescue much
more easily so once conditions are safe for men to enter then we will do so and
we will start a search and recovery.
We intend to give you a further update as Brian said at two
o’clock by which time I expect to know a bit more about the state of the
ventilation and as to whether our rescue teams can enter the mine. I will be happy to answer any more questions
in a moment. Thank you.
Good Morning everyone. There hasn’t been a lot of update
from where we were at yesterday afternoon.
We did go back up onto the mountain after we did the last briefing
yesterday and we were able to get some more samples.
The samples we took do
indicate that we’ve got a heating of some sort underground. That means that
there’s some combustion of material and its generating the gases that go with
that, so carbon monoxide and showing a slight increase in methane and some
other gases.
The samples that we were able to take yesterday afternoon
shows those gases are downward trending. They do show that there is something
happening underground – the extent of which we don’t know but we do know that
the samples that we did take yesterday afternoon show that the event of the
heating was reducing rather than increasing so that’s good.
The – it’s not
still at a point where it’s safe for the rescue teams to enter the mine and the
Superintendent will talk more about that aspect of the operation.
This morning we briefed the families and we were able to
allocate a Pike employee as an overarching liaison person. He’s a member of the
company that has been with us for a long time and knows all the men underground
and knows the business very well. He will be co-ordinating a number of
different services.
We’ve had very generous offers as I said yesterday from a
large number of different organisations. One that we had accepted and put into
place is from Air New Zealand employee support and they have mobilise nearly 30
people to Greymouth and we are catering one support person to each of the families
so they will have a direct communication, a direct update – someone who can
help them with the logistics and they are getting direct communication to
us. ... ....
The other thing that we are doing on site is in parallel to
continuing to look to access the mine. Yesterday we talked about the increased
gas levels making it unsafe or difficult for the helicopter to land at the
shaft site because of the exhaust from the helicopter and also because of the
risk to personnel taking the gas samples at the top of the shaft where these
gases are coming out.
They stopped taking those earlier in the afternoon and as
I said we were able to get back and take those samples yesterday afternoon and
we expect to do so again today.
In parallel to that we have also mobilised a
drill rig this morning – the drill rig’s gone up onto the mountain and we will
be looking to drill a hole down into the mine, a small hole, primarily for
taking gas samples so initially it will be just big enough to be able to take
gas from a different part of the mine to where the shaft is, slightly further
into the mine and if we can make that hole big enough and in a timely manner
and if we can get the right gear then we will have some other opportunities for sampling the environment or for putting
down some other devices into the mine.
At the moment it’s planned to be a six
inch hole and it will go down – I’m not sure of the exact depth – that will
depend on where the rig is being located on the surface but it will be in the
order of 100 to 150 metres deep.
The topography in that area is quite steep so our
opportunities to put drilling rigs on the surface is quite limited so it’s a
matter of mixing the right piece of ground on the surface to put a drill rig on
– because they have to be fairly big rigs if you could imagine to go down and
through very hard rock even to 100 to 150 metres.
Where we fit the drill rig
will have to be aligned with the roadway underground to be able to drill that
hole into the roadway so we will put the mix for the best place for the rig and
the best place to drill the hole to and we’ve got a location for that and that
will be somewhere a couple of hundred
further metres into the mine from where the shaft is so that will give us slightly
different information and it will give us a bit more information about what is
going on.
With best intentions and with best drilling rates we should
be able to get there later this evening in drilling so perhaps 16 to 24 hours
worth of drilling but it is also a different environment it is working in – it is
a mechanical device, it is up in the top of the mountain and we are drilling down
through hard rock – so there’s every chance that it could take longer than that
and we also have to hit a 5 metre wide
roadway at depth so there’s always a chance that the drill rods will go off
skew a little bit and we may have to have a second attempt at it.
We’ve got expert drillers. We’ve got very good knowledge –
we’ve drilled 40 odd bore holes in this area and we know what we’re doing and
the contractors know what they’re doing but it will take at least all day if
not into tomorrow to finish that hole and we will keep you updated on that.
I will hand it over to you Gary.
[SUPERINTENDENT GARY
KNOWLES]
Our primary focus today is still a rescue operation. We are
looking at staying on site.
Overnight we did our last dip sample at 8pm and as
a result of that sample we still think it is not safe to put people underground
to effect the rescue.
We have met with the family today and explained that and as
a senior police officer I am not prepared to put men underground when there is
still a risk.
So today we are back on site – we have been there all night – the
teams are active – the rescue crews have been practicing all night and they
will be training, training, training - looking at the risk options so that when
that window of opportunity opens – we are going underground.
We are still
focussing on a rescue operation. I would like to go underground and bring these
guys out.
We are working with the mine company very closely and
looking at all options and one of the things that Peter talked about was
drilling a hole to give us an idea of what the air is like down there with the
hope that it is clean enough to send men underground to effect the rescue.
We have also been in touch with our international partners and
I have had offers of support globally from Australia and America and also the
Chileans - from senior police officers who are experienced in mine and rescue
disasters and we are working with them.
This is a combined operation and our major focus is bringing
these guys home.
As time develops you have got to understand that it’s not
simply a case of putting on a mask and running in there – the risk is huge and
the activity that is happening underground, I am not prepared to put guys down
there until it is a stable environment and we can bring these guys out.
GUYON Could I start by adding my own
small voice of condolence for this tragedy, and to recognise that you have
fronted up to the public and to the media constantly, and I appreciate you
doing that for us again today. PETER WHITTALL - You're more than welcome.
GUYON I just want to get a
picture of how much of an issue methane was at this mine. And I go back
to the company's annual review for 2010, when it estimated that for the next
year it could see 105,000 to 185,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
That sounds like a lot of methane, enough for the company to even consider
using it for power generation on site. I mean, was this a very gassy
mine? PETER It was a moderately gassy
mine. It had quite a range of gas, from virtually nothing on the
escarpment, obviously, to the west - it's bled off over many thousands of years
- to still low levels about more than half the lease, but it was quite gassy, I
would say moderately gassy, on the eastern side of the lease, which is the
first part that we're mining. The actual total quantity of gas per cubic
metre, or per ton of coal, wasn't very very high. I've worked in mines
with up to twice as much methane as what Pike had. Because we had a thick
seam and because we had quite permeable coal - in other words, the gas was given
off freely - then the daily hazard or the daily management requirement for gas
was foremost in our operational requirements.
GUYON And what did that mean in
terms of monitoring? Was there continuous monitoring for methane in this
mine?
PETER Yeah, there was. We
have a range of different monitoring types. We go from hand-held where
the mining officials, including myself, carry a hand-held methane monitor
wherever you go, and you can test in places likely to find methane, like up in
high parts of the roof or cavities. And when I or the mine managers do an
inspection, or the underviewers on shift do their inspections, one of the
things they always test for is methane. And also the guys in charge of
each of the development units, the deputies and the senior mining guys, also
have hand-held methane detectors. The machinery themselves that's cutting
coal, they have methane monitors on board that cut power automatically if the
methane levels go above what's actually a very low percentage and nowhere near
the explosive range. And then we also have parts of the mine that are
monitored continuously and electronically, and that data is fed back to our
control room on the surface 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
GUYON One of the former miners who
now lives in Australia is reported in the weekend newspapers as saying that
there were problems with gas and with ventilation, and he claims that some of
the concerns were ignored. Is that true?
PETER Oh, that's absolutely not
true. Ignored, never. Worked on, constantly. Would we have
had issues in the early stages of the mine? Absolutely. One of the
things you do as you go into a coal seam, you've got a lot of boreholes and
you've got a lot of data, but you also have to learn your operational parameters.
So as the mine was very early starting on, we would be learning how quickly the
gas was given off, how quickly it could accumulate. That's why the mining
officials would be taking learnings from those. We started drilling holes
for exploration, and initially we didn't believe we would need to start
directing that gas anywhere in particular other than just up the ventilation
shaft. But with time, we started to get more holes and started to gather
that gas into pipelines and reticulate it through the mine and exhaust it up
boreholes. So it wasn't a learning process in gas. The people
running the mine including myself, other mine managers and underviewers that
were very experienced in gas, it's more about learning the aspects of the mine
that you're working with. You're working with Mother Nature, and every
mine is different, and even different parts of the mine are different. I
would absolutely say that from a process, from a management, from an intent and
from a systems point of view, we never ignored any safety concerns. I
can't vouch for individuals, albeit that anyone else as an individual who did
the wrong thing or was ignoring a safety procedure would be taken to task over
that, and that behaviour would be rectified.
GUYON So given what you have
said, it would seem unlikely that there could have been a slow build-up of
methane because of your monitoring systems, so are we - I know it's difficult
to speculate - but are we talking about a situation where there's been a sudden
rush of methane into the mine?
PETER Um, you're right, it is
hard to speculate. But I would agree with your first comment, to allow a
slow build-up of methane in our working areas I would find very unlikely, given
that at the time of the incident we were on a continuous shift, they'd been
working all day. And the night before mining officials had been taking
methane readings, and in the working faces we've got the records from the early
indications - and I haven't gone back through those thoroughly, that hasn't been
our focus - but my indications from reading those reports is that they were
being done properly. The only reports we haven't got are from one of the
guys, Peter O'Neill, who is still in the mine. And his shift went longer,
through the end of the shift. He worked a 12-hour shift, so his reports
for that build-up that day before are still with him. But I would expect
that there hasn't been a slow build-up in many of the working faces.
However, there is an area of the mine, in our hydro panel where we were working,
whereby the very nature of it, just the same as a longwall mine, which are more
common in Australia, you have by definition a large goaf or gob area, or goaf
area, we call it, it's a large void where the roof falls in, and that by its
nature will fill with gas, and that's part of the mining process.
GUYON How recently, if at all,
had you been shotfiring or blasting in the mine?
PETER We shotfire and
blast every day, we have done for a couple of years. We have procedures
for that. And on this particular day I understand we did a very small
shot on a piece of roadway where sometimes if you can't get a machine in to
mine it, and it's only small, you want a small little stub roadway, then
shotfiring's the most quick and efficient way. We had fired a shot at 11
o'clock, 11am, I believe. I haven't looked at the records, but I've asked
management on site, and was assured that the explosives and detonators had all
been booked out. Those that were used were accounted for, and those that
weren't used were returned and accounted for, and they were happy with the
procedures that were followed. So I have said before that, to my
knowledge and the knowledge of the management that have advised me, there's no
direct link between our shotfiring activities, and there was no shotfiring to
our knowledge going on at the time of the incident.
GUYON The company has said in
previous documentation when it's been reporting that the miners were gonna get
transponders so that they could be located. These transponders would sit
in the lamps of the helmets. Did that happen, and were they
working? Because it seemed that we didn't know where the miners were.
PETER That was implemented to a
certain extent. It was in transition, we had some in a budget. It's
quite new, I've never had those before, so it was quite new to me. I
believe I had one in my cap lamp, though it was only in a transition
phase. It's not like a GPS, though, so you don't walk around the mine, or
on a surface, and know where everyone is within the metre. It actually
goes past certain detection points. So you would have one at the entrance
to the mine and it would record that you've gone underground, and you may have
them at the entrance to panels and that would record that you've gone into that
place in the mine. Our mine was a very small area. To my knowledge,
we haven't put those location points or monitoring points underground at all,
if maybe one place. I'm just not sure of that at the moment. But
the difficulty with knowing where people are is because it's not a GPS system
they were known to go into certain areas; where in those certain areas they
are, and even if all the cap lamps had had those transponders, to my knowledge,
we would still only know that they were generally in an area of the mine.
GUYON Just in the last
couple of minutes we have, I wanna speak more generally about mining safety in
New Zealand. I know that you made a submission to the Department of
Labour review where you made some very strong comments about the lack of mine
inspectors in New Zealand. Would they have made any difference if you had
had more mine inspectors who could have checked these mines out more
frequently?
PETER No, as I said, we really
aren't into the investigation phase from our point of view yet. So
depending on the outcome of this, uh, our own internal investigation, which
will start as well - as we would normally on any safety incident - or on
anything else that anyone else finds, uh, I can't comment on what the root
cause is yet. I don't know, and therefore I can't comment on specifically
would more inspectors have made a difference here. But I can comment,
generically, that we have a very good relationship with our district inspector;
he visits the mine reasonably regularly. And I don't believe, off the knowledge
I have now, that more frequent inspections from him would have made any
difference at all. He reviewed our systems, he was there to my knowledge
a week or so earlier, but that's to my memory, meeting with our general
manager, who's also the statutory mine manager at the moment, and that
inspector is reasonably intimately knowledgeable of the Pike operations.
No, I do know the submission you're talking about, but in that particular point
I don't believe that would have been the case.
