Blast at New Zealand mine killed 29 men instantly, inquest told
The Independent Thursday 27th January, 2011
For five days, the families of the 29 men killed in November's mine explosion in New Zealand believed that they might still be alive – their hopes fuelled by the rescue the previous month of 33 Chilean miners. It was not until a second blast, which mine authorities said no one could have survived, that those hopes were finally abandoned. But, as some suspected at the time and as a coroner confirmed yesterday, the men – who included two Britons – all died instantly or soon after the initial methane explosion.At an inquest in Greymouth, the nearest town to the ill-fated Pike River coal mine, the coroner, Neil MacLean, told the men's families that, according to expert evidence, they had died from burns, concussion, suffocation, lack of oxygen or a combination of those facto...
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