Former chairman Mr John Dow made numerous concessions during his second day in the witness stand in Greymouth District Court for the royal commission into the tragedy.

Dow sidestepped commissioner Stewart Bell's question whether the board should bear some responsibility for the fatal explosion last year.

In hindsight the board should have known about the underground West Coast mine's raft of problems, which had been raised at the inquiry.

Mr John Dow said that "I think if we'd known about that, different things would have been done."

However, the board was unaware of problems and would have never tolerated them, such as men bypassing safety devices on machines and high gas levels.

"There've been a lot of things that have come out that I've been horrified at."

Mr Dow agreed Pike's health and safety manager, Neville Rockhouse, could have been intimidated by former chief executive Peter Whittall, which made him reluctant to tell the board about his concerns.

Rockhouse will start his evidence today and is the final witness for the phase three hearings this year.

Mr Dow said he wished he could offer the families of the dead men a meaningful explanation why the board was so unaware of safety problems but "I'm not sure I could give you much more than speculation".

However, he said an experienced, highly skilled management team were in charge of day-to-day running and should have raised such concerns.

He added that "There were people on site who were aware of these issues or must have been because they're written down. Why didn't they raise them appropriately to the board?"

He agreed the board's trust in the managers was misplaced because of their failure to keep them informed.

"It's fair to say that in the passage of time and hearing the testimony, we've all learned some lessons from it."

(Sourced from www.stuff.co.nz)