Authorities warn people to take health precautions as firefighters spend night responding to alarms triggered by smoke haze

This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

Victorians started Tuesday by breathing in the worst air in the world due to smoke blowing down from bushfires in the state’s east and New South Wales.

The city centre recorded hazardous levels of fine particles in the air from 12am to 4am and had since been categorised as very poor by the Environmental Protection Authority.

Air quality forecasts for Geelong, Latrobe Valley, Melbourne, central region, all of Gippsland and the north central region were all listed as hazardous for Tuesday by the EPA.

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“Overnight for Melbourne it did reach the worst in the world,” the state’s chief health officer, Brett Sutton, told reporters. “Those conditions overnight are obviously when there are cooler temperatures and the particulate matter can settle very low to the ground.

“It will improve through the course of today, I’m told by the chief environmental scientist, so with warmer temperatures that particulate matter will lift.”

Sutton said while the air quality level remained hazardous, everyone, including healthy people, were at risk.

But vulnerable groups – children aged under 14, people over 65 years, pregnant women and those with pre-existing medical conditions – should take extra care and stay inside.

Firefighters spent the night being called out to fire alarms triggered by the smoke haze.

The Metropolitan Fire Brigade told radio station 3AW on a normal night crews would attend about 20 false alarms, but overnight they were called out to about 200, but each had to be treated as a potential fire.

The fires burning through Victoria’s east and north-east have claimed four men’s lives, 353 homes and 548 other structures.

Sixteen fires were still burning and 1.4m hectares had been destroyed across the state.

Slightly calmer weather forecast was allowing firefighters to try to build containment lines, while military personnel were working to make isolated towns accessible by road.

Fires at Cann River and Tamboon in East Gippsland and at Abbeyard in the high country continued to be the most active, with watch and act alerts issued for all.

Firefighters have been helped by the military in clearing roads to get land access to cut-off communities, which have been only accessible by air or sea for two weeks.

Canadian and US firefighters are also helping in the alpine region fires.

The state government on Tuesday announced a $2.55m inquiry into the fires, led by the inspectorate general of emergency management, Tony Pearce.

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The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the inquiry was the right level of response because the fire season still had months to go and Victoria already held a royal commission into the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

Andrews said the Pearce review would examine the state’s preparedness for this season’s early and deadly fires, including how the royal commission shaped the response, and a first report would be made public mid-2020. A second report examining the recovery effort is due in mid-2021.

The government has also waived the landfill levy for Victorians trying to clear their properties of bushfire debris and dead livestock.

Dean Stewart, senior forecaster for the Bureau of Meteorology, said south-west winds on Wednesday should start lifting the smoke haze but would also bring sporadic thunderstorms.

The fires in Victoria have been burning since 21 November and most of them have been because of dry lightening from thunderstorms, including storms brought on by the fires themselves.