Daniel Rockhouse, whose brother Ben was among the 29 miners who perished at Pike, was a kilometre underground when the roof cracked, he told Radio New Zealand.

"So I got the hell out of there, and I drove up the main drive towards the portal and got about 300-400 metres away and the whole bloody roof caved in. So yeah, I'm very lucky," he reportedly said.

"All the lights went out, I got a bit of a fright, a bit of flashback a little bit."

Rockhouse said he initially did not realise that a roof cave-in had occurred where he had just been.

"I found out where it was and it was exactly where I had been sitting. I just got a bit of a fright that I had walked away from yet another very close call," he said.

"It was quite a significant fall, it was quite a lot of debris that fell, we're talking probably a couple of hundred tonnes of material, rock, and coal and probably steel ... if that directly fell on top of you, you would not have survived.

"Rockfalls happen in mines all the time but you don't hear about it.

"I've got nine lives – I've used three or four of them with Pike and probably another couple this time. I'm lucky."

A spokesperson for Peabody Energy told ILN: “We advise that Daniel Rockhouse was up to approximately half a kilometre from the incident.

“He is employed by a contracting service at the North Goonyella mine and was interviewed by both his management and the mine's general manager, assessed by site paramedics and offered counselling.

“He declined counselling and turned up for his shift the following day.”

The spokesperson said 90 mineworkers at the company’s North Goonyella Coal mine were withdrawn safely from the underground mine following a roof fall in the coal seam at the bottom of the men and materials drift at approximately 1.30pm Monday, August 15.

All employees were accounted for and no injuries were reported.

“Peabody Energy is working with the State’s Mines Inspectorate and Industry and Health and Safety Representatives to fully investigate the incident,” the spokesperson said.

“The mine is in the final stages of completing a longwall relocation.

“The mine management team and specialists (incident management team) conducted a risk assessment to fully assess options to secure the pit bottom and prepare scheduling for recovery. Limited works recommenced underground at 16.00 hours on the same day (Monday, 15 August).

“As an interim measure until recovery work has been finalised, work has commenced on a small cage winder to install over the vent shaft to provide a second means of egress to allow for a return to normal activities as soon as practicable. “

The company issued a number of internal and external communications to employees and their families from 1.30pm onwards on the day of the incident to ensure they were kept abreast of evacuation procedures.

Peabody continues to work with the Queensland Mines Inspectorate and ISHR, which have not reported any issues to date, the spokesperson said.

Last Thursday Peabody Energy announced that it expected to mine an extra 3.9 million tons (3.54 million tonnes) of hard coking coal from its North Goonyella longwall operation after securing a longwall top coal caving technology licence from Chinese giant Yanzhou Coal.

Peabody said it would work with Yanzhou to ensure the mine's workforce was fully trained and equipped to begin LTCC operations in the first quarter of 2013. The equipment is expected to be placed into service in late 2012

LTCC technology improves the recoverability of coal over traditional longwall mining methods and will allow the operation to mine the full coal seam thickness of 6.5 metres versus the 4.2m available with conventional longwall mining.

The North Goonyella mine will increase gas drainage techniques and implement improved dust abatement measures to underpin the success of the project.

Peabody has undertaken to train and up-skill its workforce over the next 12 months, with Yankuang Technology Development’s Australian subsidiary Yancoal Australia providing the LTCC technology and expertise.

Yancoal will also support Peabody Energy by providing experienced management and mining staff during extraction of North Goonyella’s longwalls 8, 9 and 10.