‘There’s been an explosion’ MAYOR TONY’S DARKEST DAY
It’s the phone call that Tony Kokshoorn remembers as if it was yesterday, a policeman telling him there had been an explosion at the Pike River Mine with up to 30 people trapped below ground.
That tragedy, which claimed the lives of 29 miners, would become a watershed in the former Grey District mayor’s 15-year tenure as he led the stoic West Coast community through one of the darkest episodes in the region’s history.
“I remember it so vividly,” says Tony (64) who was recently awarded the New Zealand Order of
