Thank you for coming today.
My name is Peter Read
I'm a Detective Superintendent and the officer in charge
of the Pike River criminal investigation.
I have a brief update for you today
in relation to two developments that have happened this week.
So the first one, we notified the families on Friday evening
that we have found more remains in the latest borehole
that we have taken imaging from.
That borehole is in one west mains
which is in the western most extremities of the mine.
We've got two probable human remains
and one possible human remains.
There were... to our belief
5 people working in that area at the time
that the time exploded.
A second development that I have for you is that
last week, the week just gone
Police got approval to
bore one more hole
and continue our drilling program in the mine.
The program was scheduled to finish on December 17 of this year
but this one extra hole means we will carry on
until the early part of next year.
So I wanted to take this opportunity firstly
to acknowledge the families and loved ones of all the men that died.
It's been 11 years of searching
to find out what's happened in the mine.
We as police officers are going to do everything possible
to find out and get answers for the next of kin and family members
It's imperative that we can do everything possible
in our power to actually find those answers.
So the extra borehole will give us valuable information
in regards to the first explosion
and what initiated that- hopefully
and how it is developed.
I'd also like to acknowledge the Pike River Recovery Agency staff
and the drilling team that are working for us
they've been extremely helpful
and we wouldn't be in the postion we are today
if they hadn't given us 110%.
I also wanted to acknowledge the police staff that have been up there working
for a considerable period of time, once again to get answers.
So... I can take any questions if you've got them.
Reporter: Did police see any...*inaudible*
Read: I'm not going to comment on that, sorry.
Reporter: and I guess... does the recent footage provide evidence
that some men survived this explosion or anything?
Read: umm... we are still getting our forensic experts to look at it
so, we've had one deployment of imagery and scanning
equipment down there and that was... umm..
at the beginning and middle of this week just gone.
Our plan is because the agency is closing down
and the drilling people are closing down as well
our plan is to do more imagery in the new year
so... we won't... we can't answer that question now just with one
drop of the imagery equipment.
Reporter: Why did you drill in this area?...
We'd previously drilled in that area and that was borehole 44
which was done in... 2010.
It was one of the original ones that was drilled.
The camera equipment that we used then
didn't give us a great distance to view
but the new camera equipment
and the staff that we got have done a fantastic job
and we've got really really good images
that are far far better
and we knew there were people working in that area
and we knew there were issues in that area too
that we were trying to confirm
in terms of what machinery was going and what they were actually doing,
so that's something our experts are going to look at.