A New Zealand miner who survived a blast that trapped 29 of his workmates has described how he and a colleague stumbled to the surface in an agonising, two-hour trek, semi-conscious from gas poisoning.
Daniel Rockhouse, 24, said he thought he was going to die after Friday's explosion at the Pike River coal mine, which he said sounded like a "shotgun blast but much, much louder and more powerful".
Rockhouse had just climbed down from his coal loader almost two kilometres (just over a mile) into the mine shaft and the force of the explosion blew him off his feet, smashing his head against a rock wall.
"I got up and there was thick white smoke everywhere -- worse than a fire. I knew straight away that it was carbon monoxide," he told the New Zealand Herald in a interview published Monday.
Rockhouse, whose 29 workmates were further along the horizontal mine shaft and have not been heard from since the explosion, said he initially panicked and ran the wrong way.
When he did try to head in the right direction he was overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning and collapsed to the ground unconscious, eventually coming around after an unknown period.
"You know when your foot goes to sleep, but it was my whole body," he said.
Rockhouse said he almost succumbed to the fumes but spurred himself on with thoughts of his wife, who is six months pregnant, and three children.
"I lay down and closed my eyes and waited for that bright light. But then I managed to roll over on to my stomach and tried to get up," he said. "I screamed at myself, 'Daniel, get up!'"
As he staggered along the mine shaft, Rockhouse came across fellow miner Russell Smith, the only other known survivor from the disaster, lying knocked out on the ground.
He dragged Smith 500 metres (yards) to a "fresh air station" -- designed as an emergency refuge for miners -- only to find it was flooded with poison gas because its door had been left open and its only phone was not working.
"I said, 'you've got to be bloody kidding me!' I screamed and kicked the wooden seats," he said.
Rockhouse revived Smith with air from a compressed air line and the pair slowly made their way through the smoke-filled mine shaft towards the surface.
They saw light about 300 metres from the mine entrance.
"I've never felt so happy or so relieved," the miner said.
Just before emerging, Rockhouse said he looked back for any sign of his workmates but saw nothing in the blackness of the mine shaft.
"I said to Russell, 'I don't think anyone else is coming'."
