Hopes of rescuing alive 29 men trapped in a New Zealand mine after an explosion dwindled yesterday as tests showed that a fire burning underground was generating toxic gases.
Police said they had “no idea” when it would be safe for rescuers to try to reach the men at the Pike River colliery, who have not been heard from since the blast on Friday.
“This is not a quick fix, we’re into day two, we have no idea how long this will take, but we are still focused on bringing these guys out,” police commander Gary Knowles told reporters.
“This is a search and rescue operation, with the emphasis on rescue,” Knowles added, although officials also said they were being realistic with the information they passed on to the families of the missing men.
Arrangements were being made to fly relatives of the five foreign nationals among the 29 to New Zealand as the news became more grim and people packed churches to pray for a miracle.
“Samples we took do indicate that we’ve got a heating of some sort underground, that means that there’s some combustion of material generating the gases that go with that,” Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall said.
Knowles denied suggestions made at a news conference that rescue teams were showing a lack of urgency about entering the mine because he appeared to believe the chances were low of finding the miners alive.
“No, I find that really repugnant,” he said, amid heated exchanges with reporters. “We’re talking about people’s lives here and I find it upsetting to think you’d say that. My decision is made based on safety and what experts are saying.”
Tearful family members, who had been kept away from the disaster site since Friday’s explosion, were taken to the scene for a two-hour visit yesterday to view the rescue preparations.
Whittall said the trip helped the families, some of whom have publicly questioned the delay, gain an understanding of the problems facing the rescuers.
However, he conceded that the families’ concerns were mounting the longer their loved ones were underground.
“Obviously, with nearly 48 hours gone by now, they’re starting to be very concerned and want as much information as they can, and today has been very much about that. There was a lot of emotion on the site ... there were some very poignant things up there for them, cars still parked and other things, and they were very emotional,” he said.
Earlier, Knowles described the chances of survival as “the 6 million dollar question. We’re looking at every possible outcome of this operation and we’re still remaining positive.”
He maintained it was still too dangerous to send a rescue team into the mine.
“I am not going to put 16 guys underground and risk losing them to effect a half-arsed rescue. The risk is huge,” he said.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened