Australia's summer bushfire smoke killed 445 and put thousands in hospital, inquiry hears
Smoke from the Australian bushfires of the 2019-20 summer caused an estimated 445 deaths and put more than 4,000 people in hospital, a royal commission has heard.
Eighty per cent of the Australian population was affected by smoke from the fires, which burned in six states across six months.
Associate Prof Fay Johnston, an environmental health expert from the University of Tasmania, said the health problems from bushfire smoke were much greater than the health impact of the fires themselves.
The total health cost for the 2019-20 season was $2bn, four times higher than the second most severe season for bushfire smoke in 2002-03.
The total value of bushfire insurance claims nationally was $2.2bn.
Johnston told a hearing of the royal commission into natural disaster arrangements that small smoke particles triggered an immune response similar to fighting off an infection, which in people with underlying chronic conditions like asthma or heart disease could cause “serious illness or even death”.
“If you’re already at higher risk of a heart attack for whatever reason then an increase in particles in the air and the changes your body makes in response to that … can cause a cardiac arrest and can cause death,” she said.
A study overlaying hospital admissions with air quality data, tracking deadly PM 2.5 smoke particles, found 445 excess deaths attributable to smoke from the 2019-20 bushfires. It also found 3,340 excess admissions to hospitals for heart and lung issues, and more than 1,000 admissions to hospitals for asthma.
Johnston said the information about air quality is provided in different forms, often using different scales of measurement, in different jurisdictions. An asthmatic moving from Sydney to Melbourne would not be able to read the air quality data, she said.
Most bushfire data is not collected or published in a consistent way nationwide, the inquiry heard. The National Bushfire Recovery Agency, which is the only national body tracking the damage, does not include data about Western Australia or the Northern Territory
because those states did not receive emergency relief payments.
With the exception of WA and the NT, 8.2m hectares of land was burnt including 1.3m hectares of agricultural land and 1% of all vineyards.
Recovering from a bushfire takes an average of five years, the University of Melbourne disaster recovery expert Prof Lisa Gibbs said. Mental health impacts, beyond the initial trauma, could be compounded by events that follow a fire, such as loss of work, relationship breakdown or family violence.
Tim Cashmore, the principal of Mallacoota College, said many people in his community, which was encircled by fire and cut off by road for five weeks, are showing signs of trauma, including the lone firefighter who saved the school.
That firefighter has visited the school three times since the fires, Cash
more said.
“He walks in and he sits down and he cries,” he said. “He is one of the strongest men I have ever met. And he has given himself to us.”
An important part of that recovery was hope for the future, Gibbs said, and that was being “undermined” by global heating, which is increasing the risk of significant bushfire from a rare event to
“part of our new reality”.
Gibbs said that the pressure from people outside bushfire communities to get people back into their homes did not account for the ability of those affected to make decisions, such as those involved in rebuilding their house. “Bushfire brain” is a real phenomenon, she said. One family received a donated car, which they could collect as soon as they chose which of the two available colours they wanted.
“It was beyond them to choose a colour,” she said. “That’s how the brain goes when you’re in that overwhelming situation. So to rebuild … it’s very difficult.”
She suggested people affected by a natural disaster should be able to register as wanting to receive assistance, rather than having to discover and apply for grants and often repeat their story and provide the same proof of need over and over again.
The Australian small business and family enterprise ombudsman, Kate Carnell, said there should be a single point of contact for all small businesses seeking financial assistance post-bushfire.
Carnell said the federal government should be responsible for setting up that mechanism, and it should be established before disasters took place.
This summer funding was initially distributed through Services Australia and “looked like a welfare payment”, which was upsetting and offputting to business owners who had never before received government assistance, Carnell said.
“We have to think through what it actually looks like for the people at the other end of things,” she said.