Residents living near a Victorian coalmine that burned for 45 days were made "sick to their stomachs" by the smoky air, an inquiry has heard.



The investigation into the Hazelwood mine fire also heard the blaze was a world-first occurrence and the agency responsible for monitoring air quality had no precedent for dealing with the emergency.



A single father, Simon Ellis, said the community was frustrated by the lack of information about air quality and that his health and that of his seven-year-old daughter were affected by the smoke hanging over the town of Morwell.



He said sometimes the smoke was so thick he couldn't see across the road.



"There were days where you'd walk out and it was like you were breathing in something different. It wasn't a taste you enjoyed," Ellis told the inquiry on Monday. "It made us sick to our stomach."

Some residents were advised to leave due to the smoke and ash that hung over the town from 9 February.



However, when asked why the town's 2,000 school children were not relocated, a state education department representative said it would have been highly disruptive.



"Our primacy as an education department is the education and learning for children in the community of Morwell," the department's regional services deputy secretary, Nicholas Pole, told the inquiry.



"It is highly disruptive to a group of teachers and students to be relocated."



Schools and early childhood centres were provided with air monitoring equipment to help principals make decisions about letting children outside, although this did not start until 18 February – ten days after the fire started.

The inquiry heard Victoria's Environment Protection Authority (EPA) had not been called to respond to a mine fire before. John Merritt, its chief executive at the time, said the EPA was not an emergency air monitoring agency.

"It was simply without precedent that we would have this sort of event of this sort of duration ... that would warrant the emergency readiness of mobile air monitoring equipment," Merritt said.



The inquiry heard the EPA was called in to help with the emergency response to the fire on 11 February – two days after the blaze started in the open cut brown coalmine – and first transmitted reliable data from a 24-hour reading on 14 February.

It also heard there was a week-long gap between air quality data being recorded at East Morwell and Morwell South where conditions were more severe.