Malfuntioning Robot, Hard Rock Hinder Rescue of Trapped New Zealand Miners

Efforts to reach 29 miners trapped by an underground explosion on New Zealand's South Island ground to a halt as a military robot that was relaying images from inside broke down in a passageway.

Police superintendent Gary Knowles said the army robot sent in to transmit pictures and assess toxic gas levels was damaged by water and out of commission. Authorities were urgently seeking other such robots from West Australia and the United States to replace the broken one, Knowles said.

"I won't send people in to recover a robot if their lives are in danger," he said. "Toxicity is still too unstable to send rescue teams in."

Making matters worse, the drilling team boring into the mine tunnel had hit "very hard rock" overnight, Knowles said. The police superintendent's statements came as rescuers waited impatiently for a chance to test if air quality underground was safe enough for them to go in to pull out the miners, who have been trapped for nearly five days.

Family members have expressed frustration with the pace of the response as officials acknowledge it may be too late to save the miners, who have not been heard from since a massive explosion ripped through the Pike River Mine on the country's South Island on Friday.

A buildup of methane gas is the suspected cause of the explosion. And now the presence of that gas and others — some of them believed to be coming from a smoldering fire deep underground — are delaying a rescue over fears they could still explode.

A diamond-tipped drill was put to work as workers hit layers of hard rock and came within 33 feet (10 meters) of the tunnel where they believe some of the miners are trapped, police superintendent Gary Knowles said. The 500-foot (160-meter)-long shaft they are creating will allow them to sample gas levels — including explosive methane and carbon dioxide — and determine if rescuers can finally move in days after the blast.

Knowles said rescuers planned to drop a listening device down the hole to see if they could hear anything — such as tapping sounds — that might indicate that the miners were still alive.

"This is a very serious situation and the longer it goes on, hopes fade, and we have to be realistic. We will not go underground until the environment is safe," Knowles said.

Two workers stumbled out of the mine within hours of Friday's explosion, but there has been no contact at all with the remaining 29. A phone line deep inside the mine has rung unanswered.

Police on Tuesday said that a second robot from New Zealand's military was being flown in by helicopter from Wellington that that a robot specialized for underground work was being flown in to Auckland from Australia or the USA and onto Greymouth from there. I'm hoping that this will have a similar outcome to the Chilean miners' saga last month, but unfortunately that may not be the case at this point.