A Pike River survivor will be among those waiting at Pike River on Friday to see the portal re-opened.
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Russell Smith suffocated in the first explosion, only to survive - dragged out of the mine by Daniel Rockhouse. He has no memory of what happened that fateful day eight years ago.
"There was no oxygen," Smith told Newshub.
"When Daniel came across me, I was about to become coherent; then, he said, he was about to pull me hair back, my eyes were rolling around in my head so I was slowly about to come around.
"But no, I can't remember nothing."
They lost 29 mates that day, and now Smith's waiting for answers as to what caused a series of explosions that killed their friends while they were at work.
"It's more so the kids, I think a lot of them are at the age now where they're asking questions and the families can't really give them an answer - they've never been told," Smith says.
Dave Gawn is the man leading the Pike River Recovery. His job to safely re-enter the mine drift in the search for answers as to what happened.
"For me this is an unclosed chapter in New Zealand's history - and you know this is the start, we would hope in closing that final chapter it will provide some closure for the families," the Pike River Recovery Agency CEO says.
For Smith, Friday is the beginning of a much tougher chapter of uncertainty.
"It's a start of another part of the battle, it's been a long battle to get to here and then going in there, trying to gather enough evidence and then prosecutions," he says.
The many years of questions are almost at an end as the search for answers begins inside Pike River on the West Coast.
Newshub.
