Black Summer’s full death toll revealed

The number of fatalities connected to the Black Summer bushfires went massively beyond the 26 people who perished in the flames, it has been revealed.

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THE true health costs of the Black Summer have been revealed, with researchers finding there were 429 smoke-related deaths, and 3230 hospital admissions during the 2019-2020 bushfire season.

The deaths are in addition to the 26 fatalities directly caused by the fires.

The University of Tasmania-led research, published today, estimated the total smoke-related health costs of the fire catastrophe to be almost $1.95 billion – more than three times the expense of our next most costly bushfire season, in 2002-03.

Estimating the health costs of every bushfire season since the turn of the century, the researchers found the total cost of the 2019-20 season was more than nine times the median figure of $211 million.

A state-by-state breakdown of the data reveals that while Black Summer bushfires affected all parts of Australia (except for the Northern Territory, which has minimal fire activity during its wet season), New South Wales copped the brunt of the devastation, with more than 54 per cent of total deaths and health costs.

Tourists and locals on the beach at Batemans Bay at the height of the Black Summer bushfires. The NSW south coast was one of the areas most devastated by the fires. Picture: Supplied by NSW Surf Lifesaving

“That section of the Pacific coast of Australia really got hammered. From northern to southern NSW, there was basically fire in the eucalypt forest right down the coast,” said Professor David Bowman from the University of Tasmania.

Prof Bowman said the study would help move debates about bushfire prevention on from “fuzzy concepts and worrying about furry animals”.

“We’re now moving it into numbers, dollars; that has policy traction,” he said. “It sets up the argument for the investments we’re going to have to make to manage bushfires.”

Professor Brian Oliver from the Respiratory Molecular Pathogenesis Group at Sydney’s University of Technology lauded the study, but warned the actual costs would be even higher than stated in the report because it could not include future health events arising from the Black Summer fires.

“As a country what this means for us is that if we have more bushfire events of the magnitude which was experienced in 2019/2020 the health and economic costs will affect everyone in Australia, through either higher taxes or direct health effects,” Prof Oliver said.

But the Black Summer could prove to be a game changer in terms of bushfire management because it directly affected so many people in urban centres, Prof Bowman said.

“Half the Australian population or thereabouts were exposed to injurious levels of smoke (during the Black Summer),” he said.

“The bush can seem a long way away. But when Sydney and Canberra were getting fumigated that’s when these issues resonate with everybody. And that means we’re all in this together and it breaks down the city/country divide.”

The researchers also found that emergency department admissions for asthma spiked in 2019-20, with 1523 attendances. Particulate matter concentration in some densely populated areas was up to 100 times higher than normal on some days.

Professor David Bowman from the University of Tasmania. Picture: Chris Kidd

Professor Brian Oliver from Sydney’s University of Technology. Picture: Supplied

Asthma Australia is calling for a public education campaign about the health risks associated with poor air quality, modelled on the Cancer Council’s long-running SunSmart Slip, Slop, Slap campaign.

Asthma Australia CEO Michele Goldman told News Corp that although asthmatics could have attacks during any type of conditions, bad air quality days can prompt anxiety, which in itself can trigger a bout in some people.

“We all take clean air for granted until we can’t breathe. It’s a frightening and stressful experience,” she said. A survey of sufferers found that over the Black Summer, asthmatics felt “anxious, helpless, hopeless and at their wits end to know what they were to do,” she added.

Currently, death certificates do not record if the fatality was smoke-related, and this should change, Ms Goldman said.

Asthma Australia CEO Michele Goldman. The organisation is calling for a air safety awareness campaign.

“We need to better understand and measure these things going forward, to understand the true morbidity and mortality,” she said.

Asked whether the health issues of asthmatics were being disregarded amid the increasingly strident calls for more prescribed burning operations, Ms Goldman said recognition of the effect of smoke was “improving”.

“The Black Summer bushfires has served to improve the recognition of the broader community, governments and health care professionals about the link between smoke exposure and health. I don’t think it’s well understood but I think it’s improving,” she said.

Residents take a dip to cool down at Lake Jindabyne, under a red sky due to smoke from bushfires on January 4, 2020. Picture: Saeed Khan/AFP

While the prevalence of asthma remained fairly steady at around 11 per cent of the Australian population, Ms Goldman said extreme weather conditions such as dust storms, bushfires and thunderstorms like the one that hit Melbourne in November 2016 were proving to be a common trigger for asthma.

“With extreme weather patterns we are seeing both the increasing severity for those people who already have asthma but we’re also seeing the development of asthma in people who were’t previously diagnosed,” she said. “With the (Melbourne) thunderstorm event, between 30 to 40 per cent of people who had asthma symptoms during that event had not had a prior diagnosis.”

Read the full University of Tasmania paper here.

Originally published as Black Summer’s full death toll revealed