In light of the West Footscray fire, Dan Fogarty asks why industry is still based so close to the city
IT’S 2018. We still have industrial estates 10km from the city at risk of spewing toxic fumes across thousands of homes. It’s not good enough, writes Herald Sun’s Dan Fogarty as he shelters in his Kingsville home with his pregnant wife.
Opinion
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THICK black, toxic smoke covers the sky outside my home in Melbourne’s inner west.
Off in the distance there is the faint sound of explosions.
It’s 5.30am and I’ve just gone to see what is happening after I was woken by the sound of constant sirens.
Emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle races down a major road near my house.
A huge fire has engulfed a nearby factory and some horrible toxic chemicals called oxyacetylene and acetone are apparently behind the explosions.
There is asbestos in the building, too.
EXPLOSIONS AS INFERNO SENDS TOXIC SMOKE OVER INNER WEST
Soon warnings are issued telling us to shut our doors and windows and not go outside.
People within a 500m radius are told to shelter indoors immediately.
Pregnant women are particularly at risk.
My wife is 39 weeks’ pregnant.
Later I’m told my young daughter will spend much of the day inside at school as its too dangerous for kids to play outside.
Then by mid-morning the children are sent home.
Eight other local schools are closed for the day.
Why should we have to put up with this?
In 2018, why do we still have industrial estates on prime land 10km from Melbourne’s CBD? Shouldn’t governments be putting long-term planning around what can be done with this land and whether any of it could be reclaimed for affordable housing?
While it is clear many of these factories provide employment to a vast number of people, take a drive along the industrial streets of Tottenham and West Footscray and you’ll see many abandoned factories.
One local told me “who knows what’s in them” — many are simply used to store things like the highly toxic chemicals that exploded today.
People will say, “You moved into the western suburbs, you knew what you were getting yourself into”.
But why does it have to be this way?
Is the safest place for dangerous factories a few hundred metres from schools and houses?
If the land is too contaminated for housing, there must be something else it could be used for.
Other industrial areas in Melbourne have been turned into parks, could the same happen here?
Over recent decades the Docklands precinct has been transformed into a housing and transport hub and there are plans to do the same in Fisherman’s Bend and Arden St.
So why not in the west, too?
As I look out my back door at lunchtime, black smoke still fills the air.
How many more times we will have to breathe in these hideous chemicals?
Dan Fogarty is a Kingsville resident and Herald Sun digital producer
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