New South Wales southwest district secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union Graham White, who has known Whittall since he was a trainee in the Illawarra, said he had always talked up safety as an issue and that operations he was involved with rarely had an injury.

“He talks the talk about safety, but that doesn’t mean the systems over there are at the same levels as over here,” White said.

“What I’ve heard is the mine powering the fan lost power and when it restarted the explosion happened.

“We very rarely had an injury at Dendrobium.

“That’s because we had systems in place. Over here – because methane is such a big issue – we have got all our systems in place.”

Before working at Pike, Whittall had 24 years of experience with BHP Billiton Illawarra Coal, including managing the Dendrobium, Tower and Appin mines in NSW.

White, who was involved with the rescue attempt at Appin in 1979, said he feared for the worst at the Pike River mine.

“It’s no different to Appin,” he said, referring to the size of the blast at Pike River.

The Appin explosion, which tragically killed 14 miners, was started by a rush of methane gas in K panel, a remote mine tunnel about 3 kilometres underground.

Ten miners died in the crib room while having a food break and another four were found some distance away. The recovery, which involved 100 volunteers, lasted for more than 26 hours.

White said the provision of compressed oxygen from “fresh air bases” in the mine to top up the miners’ supply on their self-rescuers would only be of limited use.

“When you’ve got methane in coal mines, ‘freak stations’ will keep you going for a while, but not for four days,” he said.

Shortly after the explosion on Friday, Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little told ILN gas was an issue for a lot of the West Coast mines.

“Some are more gassy than others, it’s a pretty big risk on a lot of those seams on the West Coast,” he said.

Pike performed in-seam drilling for gas drainage purposes.

Meanwhile, Pike chairman John Dow rejected suggestions that unsafe practices were being used at the mine as it tried to catch up on a coal order to India, calling them “almost mischievous”.

“It's not correct, it's absolutely not correct. Pike has had perfectly adequate funding for all of its development and mining activities and to maintain the highest levels of safety during the process,” he told Radio New Zealand.

“I've heard those rumours during the day yesterday but I can categorically deny, that's quite incorrect.”

The monitoring of methane gas in the mine was “working just fine” before the explosion, he added.

Dow said chambers were not provided as they are in Australian mines but there was a “fresh air base” which was not far from the working area of the coal mine and not far from the entrance.

“As the mine develops and gets more complex and extensive underground then a series of refuges were planned to be built,” he said.

“But in fact the men aren't very far away from the fresh air base and in ordinary circumstances would easily have been able to walk there.”