Pike widow disagrees with abandonment of drift recovery

A Pike River widow says that she did not sign off on a joint letter released by the family reference group yesterday which accepted the Government's decision to abandon the drift recovery. Family members attended a private online meeting with Pike River Recovery Agency leaders and Minister Andrew Little on Monday night where they learned money for the recovery had run out, and the cost of going further would be complex, dangerous and expensive. The Pike River Family Reference Group represents 27 families of the 29 killed. After the meeting, it released a statement saying the group 'accepted with heartbreak' the end of the drift recovery project. But Cloe Nieper, whose husband Kane was killed in the mine says that's not true. She says some family members weren't even invited to Monday's meeting. And she told our producer Matthew Theunissen she feels blindsided by the Reference Group's decision to release a statement she and others did not sign off on.