One resident described it as something out of Die Hard.
Drum barrels shot into the air from the enormous chemical fire at Derrimut in Melbourne’s west on Wednesday.
For the first time since its inception in 2020, Fire Rescue Victoria battled a blaze that reached the seventh-alarm level.
As the toxic black smoke billowed over Melbourne’s west, residents were reminded of a fatal tragedy at the same factory less than nine months earlier, when a 44-year-old worker, Reece Martin, died and two others were injured in a fire at the ACB Group factory in Derrimut.
More than 48 hours after it began on Wednesday, 20 firefighters remained at the site as the fire continued to smoulder on Friday afternoon.
However, as Victoria’s work safety and environmental regulators piece together the cause of the fire, community groups and experts have raised concerns about the longer-term impacts.
The Environment Protection Authority has warned the recovery of nearby waterways, contaminated from both the firefighting efforts and the chemicals at the site, could take months.
The large explosion happened at a factory that houses multiple businesses, including chemical blenders and fuel distributors, with drums containing kerosene, methylated spirits, methanol and other substances stored at the site.
Environmental and health impacts
There were no injuries from Wednesday’s fire and it was declared under control within four hours.
However, the EPA’s west metropolitan manager, Steve Lansdell, on Friday reiterated warnings for residents and their pets to stay away from affected waterways – including Laverton Creek and Cherry Creek.
Fire Rescue Victoria’s deputy commissioner for community safety, Josh Fischer, said some firefighters who fought the blaze had undergone observation and testing at hospital but had since been discharged.
“There’s a number of things that can occur as people are exposed to chemicals,” he said. “We’ll be monitoring for those … Obviously, headaches. People might have elevated heart rates, particularly with these types of activity, strenuous activity, long duration, wearing breathing apparatus, hot environments, stressful conditions.
“This is a really dangerous environment for our people to be in.”
Lansdell said fish deaths or impacts on birdlife were yet to be recorded.
“Often it can take 24 or 48 hours of this fire-water going down [for it to] start to have those impacts,” he told reporters.
“The recovery of these waterways themselves can take some weeks and months … There’s still a lot of work out there to clean it up.”
The EPA, which is conducting monitoring alongside Melbourne Water, says it will also test waterways, install sandbags and deploy trucks to suck out affected stormwater.
A Monash University chemical engineer, Dr Sally El Meragawi, says firefighting foams containing polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – or so-called “forever chemicals” – could enter into the waterways and have serious long-term environmental and health impacts.
“It really depends on how much can be cleaned up at the site and how much we’ll see entering into our actual water sources,” she says.
“Some chemicals are within the ability of general water wastewater treatment plants … but some are not.”
She points to the 2018 Footscray-Tottenham factory fire, where toxic levels of PFAS chemicals persisted in nearby recreational waters weeks after the incident. Meragawi says two weeks after the fire, the levels of PFAS chemicals were found to be 16 times higher than safe recreational water quality levels downstream from the fire site.
“The problem with PFAS especially is that when it’s in the environment, or in our food chain or bodies, it tends to stay there for a very long time,” she says.
“They have been linked to health issues such as various cancers and thyroid diseases.”
‘This isn’t going to be a quick investigation’
Fischer said there was no indication the cause of the fire was suspicious and the agency would access the site once safe to do so.
“This is going to take some time. This isn’t going to be a quick investigation,” he said.
Landsell said after the October fire the agency issued regulatory notices to the factory focused on stormwater management and containment, and the types of waste stored on site. He said those notices had been complied with, but on Thursday warned “no stone will be left unturned” during the investigations.
He said further investigations would probe the types of contaminants at the site.
Guardian Australia understands WorkSafe’s investigation into last year’s fire at the same site is ongoing. It is understood that since the October fire, seven compliance notices have been issued to the factory.
