The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand; 29 people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914.
The Pike River Mine disaster was a coal mining accident that began on 19 November 2010 in the Pike River Mine, 46 km (29 mi) northeast of Greymouth, in the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island following a methane explosion at approximately 3:44 pm (NZDT, UTC+13). The accident resulted in the deaths of 29 miners.
The Pike River Mine incident ranks as New Zealand's worst mining disaster since 1914, when 43 men died at Ralph's Mine in Huntly. It also resulted in the country's worst loss of life caused by a single disaster since the 1979 crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901, although it was surpassed three months later by the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.At the time of the explosion 31 miners and contractors were below ground. Two miners managed to walk from the mine and were treated for moderate injuries. The remaining 16 miners and 13 contractors were believed to be at least 1.5 km (1,600 yd) from the mine's entrance at the time of the initial explosion.
Subsequent explosions on the 24th, 26th and 28 November ended any hopes of any further survivors and raised serious doubt that any bodies would ever be recovered.In December 2012, Prime Minister John Key said he would apologise in person to the families of the dead, for the government's weak regulations and inadequate inspection regime.In 2017 the Government established a new Pike River Recovery Agency, with re-entry expected by March 2019. It reported to the Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry, Andrew Little. Re-entry was expected to cost $23 million over three years. The agency took over the mine from Solid Energy, after it entered liquidation in mid-March 2018.
In February 2021, the Pike River Recovery Agency reported that it had reached a point 2.2 km up the mine access tunnel to the site of a rockfall. This was the furthest point into the mine that the agency planned to go, and the work to this point had cost approximately $50 million. On 23 March 2021, the Minister responsible for Pike River Re-entry, Andrew Little, stated that it was too hard and too expensive to go any further into the mine.