Pike River Recovery Agency reveals new details for drift re-entry plan

More details have been revealed about the plan for re-entering the Pike River mine drift.

A forensics team will map and record every item of interest that they find inside the drift, metre by metre - if experts can safely reach it, Pike River Recovery Agency (PRRA) chief executive Dave Gawn says.

With police, the PRRA is developing a plan to search the drift. It is hoped that any evidence found could help piece together the mystery that surrounds what happened in November 2010.

"We're looking at having three different groups when we have the re-entry ,and the first group will be made up of people who can go in and access the ground conditions and the ventilation and so forth, and looking for any points of interest," chief operating officer Dinghy Pattinson says.

"Then they'll come out and hand it over to a full forensic team, who will do a full forensic investigation of that roadway - and when that's done, it will be handed back over to the operational team."

The team have a mandate to enter the drift and to collect evidence right to the impassable rockfall. Cameras, 3D scanners and photographs will gather footage of the inside.

"Say an item of interest has been identified - that will be mapped, virtually to the point of surveying exactly where it is, what it is and how it's laid out in relation to other items within the mine," Mr Gawn says.

"Then it will be recovered by a forensics team; the police will then deal with it as a piece of evidence until such time it is proved otherwise."

However he says it's unlikely they'll find any remains of the 29 miners who lost their lives in the tragedy. 

"Anything's possible, but I think it's less likely, because as we understand it and from the royal commission' the last known location of the 29 are within the mine workings themselves," Mr Gawn explains.

"That is beyond the rockfall and beyond the mandate of the agency."

Whatever they do find will be seen by the public after police are finished with using it as evidence, Mr Gawn says. 

The PRRA will put a recommendation to Pike River Minister Andrew Little by the end of next month as to whether or not to go ahead with the re-entry. 

Newshub.