Important milestone reached at the Pike River operation

The miners have reached the Roscil Plug, near the end of the drift, at the Pike River Mine.

It is the Pike River Recovery Agency’s latest milestone for the year and was reached last night, 349 days after dismantling the 170m barrier.

On November 19, 2010, an explosion was reported at the mine at around 3.44 pm Only two people left the mine that day, 29 people were missing.

COO Dinghy Pattinson said that around 8 p.m. yesterday, the afternoon shift arrived at the outlet that was installed in early November 2019.

“Now we have achieved another milestone, reaching the Rocsil Plug around 2,244 m due to the drift of the Pike River mine. This is where we have come this year, as we close for Christmas today and restart on Tuesday, January 5, 2021.”

The plug is 10.3 m of expanding foam that was pumped down a well in late 2019.

It was expanded to 35 times its original size to fill the entire width and height of the tunnel.

The plug kept oxygen out of the areas beyond: the last 8m of drift (the main mine tunnel), the roof drop (an area of ​​the tunnel that collapsed after the blast) and the operation of the mine (4.3 km of tunnels where the coal was extracted, and where the remains of the 29 miners are expected to be).

Pattinson said that next year he will begin with final forensic work in the outlet area and the installation of a ventilation control device.

The device, VCD2, acts as a wall with an airlock and will be located at approximately 2224m by drift.

Once it’s in place, fresh air can circulate to that drift point.

Then, mine workers wearing a long-lasting breathing apparatus will go through an airlock in the wall, tunnel through the plug, which is about 10 meters long, and recover the last few meters until the ceiling falls. .

They can then carry out the final forensic searches of the drift.

Next, forensic search and recovery operations will be completed at the Pit, Bottom in Stone, a 600m network of tunnels on both sides of the main tunnel, which had previously been “cordoned off” as a possible crime scene.