Greymouth -
Families of the men trapped in a New Zealand mine reacted with fury and devastation on Wednesday when a second massive blast at the mine prompted police to say no one could have survived.
After five days of agonising waiting, relatives of the 29 miners sobbed and shouted on hearing the bleak news.
“The reaction in there was just devastation. They just sobbed openly, just fell to the floor. There were people just shouting out, anger,” Grey district mayor Tony Kokshoorn told reporters of the families' reactions.
“It's our darkest day.”
Rescuers have held off entering the Pike River coal mine on New Zealand's South Island since the first blast ripped through it on Friday and trapped 29 men underground, saying that toxic gases made it too dangerous to enter.
But a second, even larger explosion hit the mine on Wednesday, forcing officials to concede that all those underground must have perished.
Anger had already been mounting among the relatives, who said a recovery operation should have taken place in the hours after the explosion, ahead of the build-up of naturally occurring methane and other fumes in the underground chambers.
Laurie Drew, whose son Zen was among the missing miners, said that mine manager Peter Whittall broke down as he told the families there had been a massive secondary explosion which was “worse than the first one” and that no one was expected to have survived.
But the families met the news with anger.
“They were shouting all sorts of words at them,” he said.
Drew praised both Whittall and police superintendent Gary Knowles, who has been heading the operation, but said rescuers should have rushed in on Friday afternoon when there was a “window of opportunity”.
He said families did not understand why the police had run the operation, rather than mining experts.
“The only thing that's going to make matters worse... is that people were alive after the first blast,” he told Sky News, calling for an inquiry into the disaster.
Nothing was heard from the miners - who include 24 New Zealanders, two Australians, two Britons and a South African - in the five days between the first and second explosions. - Sapa-AFP