Preparation to re-enter the Pike River mine is being likened to the Erebus tragedy by police.
Police addressed media on their progress on the re-entry plan on Friday.
The say due to the mine's unchartered territory the recovery mission will be similar to that of the horror 1979 Air New Zealand plane crash on the slopes of Antarctica's Mt Erebus.
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Detective Superintendent Peter Read says it will be a complex operation but police are determined to get into the mine.
"For every problem we've come up against there is a solution," Superintendent Read says.
"We started this investigation from a criminal investigation eight years ago so this is actually finishing the business that we started."
Specialist police officers have been trained to work in an environment unlike any other they have worked in before, he says.
Detective Senior Sergeant Grant Collins, the Pike River Recovery Agency's forensic and investigation officer, says it is "big territory" to re-enter.
"It is the first time I've worked on re-entering a mine, but it's not the first time police have been involved on a big complex difficult inquiry."
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American police involved in the criminal investigation of the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster have offered advice and expertise, Snr Srgnt Collins says.
Twenty nine men died in the Upper Big Branch tragedy, seven months before the Pike River mine explosion that killed the same number of men.
With police, the Pike River Recovery Agency (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.
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.
The team has 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.
The PRRA will put a recommendation to Pike River Minister Andrew Little by the end of the month as to whether or not to go ahead with the re-entry.
Newshub.
