Deadly Pilbara town of Wittenoom set to close

The Pilbara blue asbestos town of Wittenoom that claimed thousands of lives has received its own death knoll.

Lands minister Ben Wyatt. Picture: AAP

The Pilbara blue asbestos town of Wittenoom that claimed thousands of lives has received its own death knoll after the West Australian government announced it will forcibly acquire the last houses and evict the two or three residents who have until now refused to leave.

The move has been triggered by concerns that local and international tourists are still finding their way to Wittenoom and exposing themselves to deadly asbestos fibres blowing through the region’s picturesque gorges from massive tailings dumps.

Lands minister Ben Wyatt says he will soon introduce a bill to close the town “as a significant step in resolving this longstanding issue and ending one of the saddest chapters in Western Australian history.”

Men shovel raw blue asbestos tailings into drums at an asbestos shovelling competition at Wittenoom, in the Pilbara, WA, in 1962.

He said 2,000 workers and residents of Wittenoom have died from asbestos-related diseases. “Sadly the few remaining residents and tourists remain in the highest risk user groups from a litany of cancers and lung diseases, and the state simply cannot in good conscience allow the status quo to continue any longer,” he said.

Asbestos mining ended in 1966 and the small town was formally de-gazetted in 2007 after alarm was raised about blue asbestos-related deaths. Warning signs have been posted on public roads into the area, within the former town site and in Wittenoom Gorge. But three landowners have refused to leave despite voluntary acquisition of all other properties, including shops, in recent years.

The government estimates that three million tonnes of asbestos-ridden tailings lies in the vicinity of Wittenoom, making it the largest contaminated site in the southern hemisphere.

Asbestos Diseases Society founder Robert Vojakovic, a former asbestos miner who witnessed many workmates’ deaths, says forced closure is long overdue. But he warns that unstable and airborne blue asbestos poses a lingering threat to any visitor to the area.

“In the mid-80s, we proposed a huge wall around the tailings and then some form of covering to stop dispersal. The place is hopelessly contaminated.”

He said the Asbestos Diseases Society will this week be assisting a woman — one of more than 100 new cases in the past 12 months — who attended school in Wittenoom for only a few months in 1962 and has since contracted the deadly cancer mesothelioma.