The Melbourne Airmageddon Disaster of 1992 | Episode 52

Emerson once said, the Earth laughs and flowers well. In today's episode, the ferocity of their attack will be compared by survivors and investigators to that of a terrorist incident. Today and welcome to Doomsday History's most dangerous podcast. Together, we are going to rediscover some of the most traumatic, bizarre, and on inspiring, but largely unheard of or forgotten disasters from throughout human history and around the world. On today's episode, you'll learn about the cuddly fur baby with the strongest bite in the world. We'll hear about an actual doomsday cult with more resources than Al Qaeda, and we'll learn what to do if you found your throat tightening up like an anus. This is not the show you play around kids, or while eating, or even in company. But as long as you find yourself a little more historically engaged and learn something that could potentially save your life, our work is done. So with all that said, shoot the kids out of the room, put on your headphones and safety glasses, and let's begin. Pack an insect repellent strong enough for sharks. You're one thirty five SPF sunscreen and your crocodile resistant metal leggings. We're heading back to Australia, good eye. You remember a few years ago when we started the year off with threats of North Korean nuclear war and murder hornets were all over the news. Maybe you remember that all began with Australia burning down. It's probably the last time you've ever even heard of the place. And not because rest in peace Australia. It's just that geographically they're so far removed that they practically have to self immolate just to even get noticed. And as a Canadian, I get that oath because my country is currently burning down, and because Canada rarely makes international news either. Most people do only know Australia for fosters and barbies and unraings and sharks and that accent. But did you know it's the world's biggest island, and it's the world's biggest country that is also an island. It's also the only country that's its own continent and vice versa, obviously, And when they were handing out awards for the biggest countries, Australia snagged the sixth place ribbon. You have to go out of your way to know anything about Australia, which I've done since I was about ten, and I can say this is probably the most interesting place that you know nothing about. Did I forget to mention the natural fauna of all of the most dangerous snake, spiders, jellyfish, octopi, birds, ticks and fish on Earth, The most deadly variant or relative in each of their respective family trees are all unanimously headquartered in Australia. They even have the deadliest marsupial and for reference, roly poly wombat and cuddly little koalas those are marsupials. But so it's the Tasmanian devil. And when I googled our Tasmanian devil's friendly Google's can't response was to tell me to fight off, and it immediately started complaining about how bad they smell. They're only about twenty pounds, but they have the highest bite force quotion of any living animal. An alligator can bite down with a force of about almost three thousand psi. A gray white shark can bite down with a force of about four thousand psi. Tas can only bite down at around two hundred psi, but at its weight, he's biting ten times harder than a gray white shark, and if a gray White were bitten by a radioactive Tasmanian devil. It could conceivably bite through concrete or steel. Also worth noting they eat just about anything and they leave a body shaped hole everywhere they go. But Australia is not all snake bites and devil holes. News Nines Morning Breakfast Show with Karl Stefanovic and Arabo is, in my estimation, the only morning television program in the world worth watching, also quickly shouting out Alex Brook, Richard, Tim, Sylvia, David and Jane. When outsiders think Australia, the big ticket attention grabbers are things like the Sydney Opera House or Uleru. It's the largest monolith on Earth and the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living thing on Earth. And sure and yeah, and that's great. Grab a few picks for me too. I've always been more interested in what they do than what they have. Allow me to share two of my favorite historical Australian anecdotes, as pointed out by Bill Bryson in his wonderful novel In a Sunburned Country. This is the abbreviated legends of Harold Holt and om Shinrikio. Harold Holt was elected Prime Minister of Australia in nineteen sixty six, and mid nineteen sixty seven he went for a swim at Cheviot Beach in Port Sea and he was never seen again. A world leader died, and the whole thing pretty much went completely unknown noticed by the world at large. Imagine Jimmy Carter just disappeared and got replaced mid season, and when asked, the world just sort of shrugged. It has to make them nuts, just how little these people are regarded. But nothing drives that point home harder for me than the story of om Shinrikio. You ever hear of them, you might remember them for killing twelve and injuring fifty five hundred on the Tokyo subway system in ninety five, with Saren what's Sarahen? You ask, don't worry. If you ever came across it, you'd know. You'd start with a running nose and a tightness in the chest, followed by difficulty breathing and nausea and drooling, followed by spasticity and tremors and loss of control of your body functions, followed by vomiting and defecation and urination, followed by cardiac arrest and death. So yeah, it would be an open casket funeral, but they would probably have to clean you up like a lot. Saren is one of the most toxic nerve agents on the planet, and an actual Japanese doomsday cult with really deep pockets and a mission statement to destroy the world got their hands on a bunch funny story. Sure, but what does that have to do with Australia. While Japan and Australia are relatively close, and it turns out that aum Shinrikyo had purchased enough empty space in the western Australian outback to park two hundred and ten million Dodge caravans, but they weren't parking Dodge caravans. From the seismograph readings across the whole Pacific region to the eyewitnesses who saw a massive flash in the sky two investigators who discovered an abandoned evil outback science lab with uranium, it was pretty clear that Australia's first nuclear detonation counted as the first privately owned, non governmental nuclear explosion in history. I don't know if it's more surprising that the country is so big and empty that a doomsday cult could do this, or that it took four years for anyone to say or do anything about it. The population density in the outback is so low that everyone basically has a backyard the size of Rhode Island all of themselves. So it's no real wonder that things go unnoticed. I figured the spiders and the skin peelingly high temperatures tend to keep the curious away. The highest temperature ever recorded in Australia was fifty point seven degrees celsius or one hundred and twenty three point three fahrenheit, So you understand if you've stuck your hand in water that warm in five minutes time, you would have a third degree burn. Yeah. Hot, And to us outsiders, Australia seems like the kind of place where people talk about rain the way you might talk about big feet or honest government. Sure it can be fun to talk about, but it's kind of rarely seen. Australia has a strange relationship with rain. Mountains along the eastern coast block or disrupt the natural weather patterns coming off the ocean, and it prevents most of the moist air from making its way inland. The northern coast sits mostly in the subtropical region, so it gets a ton of rain, but mostly from cyclones and monsoons, and the rest of the country us sort of bakes and fries and gets a spattering here or there. That's kind of on a schedule that was designed by a wallaby with a scrabble cup. Australia has more erratic rainfall than anywhere on the planet. There's a small town called whim Creek and Western Australia that got thirty inches of rain in a single day, but normally it gets less than the Sahara. So, like I said, erratic and interesting, but no worries. We're not going to spend our time desiccating into a sun bleach husk in the outback, Noah. We are going to be spending our time in Melbourne, which I believe is pronounced Melbourne, but I'm not doing accents. Melbourne is the second largest city in Australia and it's often called the cultural capital because it's known for having art galleries and theaters and concerts and festivals and Grand Slams and Cups and Grand Prix and you name it. And Melbourneians like it that way. And maybe later we can take into cricket match while we're here. But oh look, the sky is getting a little angry. The date is Monday, the twenty of November nineteen ninety two, and it was already twenty seven celsius or eighty fahrenheit by eight thirty in the morning. Now we've complained bitterly about weather forecasters in any past episodes. You know about their superstitious voodoo approach to prediction, but in their defense, whether it is inherently dynamic and it can change rapidly, which often catches meteorologists with their pants down, and Australia is no different. All complaints should be forwarded to the Bureau of Meteorology. And it's worth pointing out that today they're warning about extreme levels of pollen in the air, not that anybody pays attention once they start recording on pollen counts, and two points, pollen counts are somehow even more boring than UV ratings. Local meteorologists saw the ingredients for storm self formation days earlier, and whatever this weather was going to be, it was pushing an envelope of refreshingly cool air ahead of it. A strong wind blew through the burbs and buy around five the Bureau of Meteorology issued a room mail warning of severe storm potential with damaging wind, heavy rain and hail. Room mail is exactly what you think it is. It dates back to the old days before telegrams and phone lines and meteorologists being meteorologists. Well, the wind showed up and there was storm activity, but massive rain and hail never materialized, so a lot of people ended up spending most of the storm outdoors, making the most of the break in the temperature. They'd predicted heavy rainfall, but only a few millimeters fell over the city. People in the Brunswick suburb of Melbourne were watching the storm and got themselves a windy faceful of dust, dirt and grit, for it followed immediately by the passing rain. And there was plenty of lightning and thunder, and it was boastful and loud, but it signified nothing. The rain was barely enough to wake Jackie fell zone from her nap. The sky was gray and branches were dancing in the wind outside her house. But Jackie woke up with tightness in her chest. She couldn't breathe. She had asthma. But this was something else. For those who don't know Asthma is a way of life for about two hundred and thirty five million people around the world. What happens is when they come in contact with something that they don't agree with, their airways become inflamed, They swell up, which narrows them and then it all plugs with mucus. People with asthma usually manage their systems with medical inhalers that puff directly into the lungs to control or eliminate the symptoms, which is exactly what she would want and Jackie did. She used her inhaler repeatedly, but it wasn't helping. She ran to the bedroom to grab her nebulizer. It's this small little machine that turns liquid respiratory medicine into this mist that you can inhale. But again nothing, And she wasn't alone. Thousands of people across Melbourne found themselves out of nowhere, unexpectedly, struggling to breathe, gasping for breath and sobbing in terror became very popular. Ambulances, firefighters and police criss crossed the city trying to address an onslaught of calls over eighty five them. Rescue workers have a special dislike for respiratory calls. You know, because of the urgency of them and local hospitals, they might expect forty ambulances on a bad day, and today they were getting over one hundred an hour. Lights and sirens everywhere, And can you imagine going to the hospital with fourteen thousand other people trying to do the same. Emergency rooms were swamped. Now imagine calling for an ambulance and getting a busy signal, or going out to the pharmacy and not being able to get in because it'd become a scene out of contagion. Imagine people collapsing in the street waiting for paramedics. Imagine watching your neighbors desperately performing CPR on their lawn. On that day, the time between the onset of symptoms and cardiac arrest was as short as fifteen minutes. Many of these people weren't able to speak before they collapsed, and when paramedics finally rocked up and found Jackie fowl zone, she told them I'm going to die. I cannot breathe, and I know this is my last moment. But you have to imagine that I said that very much slower, with a better accent and a bake pause and a sound between every word. The paramedics forced oxygen, a bronchodilator, and an immune suppressant down her throat to force cooperation enem her lungs. But you ever hear someone say that something's going to get worse before it gets better, Well, it was kind of the opposite in this case. See her breathing appeared to get better for about a minute. So the paramedics broke out the big gun and adrenaline needle about the size of a turkey baster, and the key is to bring it down in a stabbing motion, hard enough to puncture the breastplate and enter the heart. I'm only kidding. What they did do was inject intramuscular adrenaline into her arm. The adrenaline should have quickly relaxed her airways, where the muscles were contracting and spasming and mucous membranes were swelling. It was fair Dingcam to call what was happening a medical catastrophe. The Minister for Health and Ambulance Services called it a health emergency of an unpressed and at scale paramedics. We're taking a call for help every four and a half seconds, and within just over an hour of the first call, one hundred and seventy five people had canceled all their evening plans, and we're looking at having machines taking over their breathing for them. All told, seven men and three women aged eighteen to fifty seven were unable to receive medical assistance in time and died. So someone forgot how to lung and can only communicate with faint choking sounds. Would you know what to do? Grab a knife and a straw? Is that what you think I was going to say? Why don't we start simpler before you start a DIY street tracheotomy? Maybe you just need to calm down. Maybe everything just needs to calm down. Anxiety and panic can make respiratory situations worse, so just be calm and reassuring so they can be calm and slow their panics need for air. The first thing you're gonna want to do is make sure that somebody phone zero zero zero, that's Australian for nine one one, And they're going to want to know are they turning blue in the face or the lips or the fingernails. Does it look like they're breathing too fast and they can't get out a full sentence. This is the kind of thing that's going to help a rescue worker know what they're expecting. The next most important thing is them medicine, and if they have an inhaler, great, please help them use it. But if they don't, I'm going to tell you what to do. I'll want you to take one deep breath, cup one of your hands to the side of your mouth, and yell, we need an inhaler. My wife comes from a long line of Brits that would rather die painfully and alone than bother someone about it, and that is why, statistically forty five percent of them die from these things. So I say, if you're that way, stop it. Have you met people? Tell me you've met people and still think that your life is worth less than their discomfort. Usually this means taking one or two puffs as deeply as they can, waiting a few minutes, and then repeating as necessary. And if you're lucky enough to snag a quick relief or a rescue inhailer, they contain a fast acting medication like albuterol that quickly opens up the airways and makes breathing easier and in a bad enough situation, sixteen puffs in four minutes is not inappropriate. There is no health danger to using a high dose in an emergency, so just keep monitoring their breathing and look for signs of improvement or worsening. So now ticketep breath and now imagine yourself with a respiratory problem. It could feel like breathing through a straw. You're trying to power your whole body and mind on tiny SIPs of oxygen. Techniques like pursed lip breathing and deep belly breathing can help control your overall breathing and reduce the feeling of breathlessness, which reduces the stress, which improves your ability to breathe through the problem. I don't know what the protocol currently is for removing a stranger's top when they can't speak, but close around the chest and neck can feel like a noose when you can't breathe. The only way to remove a stranger's clothings that won't get you tackled is to cut it off from the bottom with medical scissors actually called trauma shears, but most people I know call them tough cuts, like the way all tissues or cleanexes or all dark brown yeast pastes are vegemites. But back to the scissors. I'm not suggesting the best thing for someone suffering from respiratory distress is nudity, so use common sense. Help them to sit upright or even stand if they could. This allows their lungs to expand more fully, and anecdotally a lot of people describe sitting forward and rolling their shoulders like mister Burns helps expand their airways further. Now one thing to be prepared for if they lose consciousness. It's important that you've got someone nearby who can start CPR if possible, but ideally they remain conscious and they respond positively to the inhalance and are treated by trained medical personnel as soon as possible. Epic thunderstorm asthma events are uncommon and they don't occur every year, but you should be aware of the heightened risk of thunderstorm asthma in general throughout the grass pollen season and be appropriately prepared. If you don't know if you're sensitive, you get tested ahead of time. I'll also tell you that pollen and other allergens are significantly larger than viruses or bacteria, so a simple face mask would filter them pretty well. And if you're susceptible to asthma or other breathing difficulties. Reckon, it's probably good advice to just stay indoors during unusual weather events, maybe have a warm cup of tea and hang out with an old friend called Doom's Day. So what the hell happened? Well, you know that the seasons are switched down under right, Australia's seasons are at opposite times to those in the Northern Hemisphere. December to February summer, March to May is autumn, June to August is winter, and September to November is spring. And all this spring rain was relentless. September of twenty sixteen, what's the second wettest September on record in the state of Victoria. November started the same way. And there is nothing that plant life loves more. And if you have any level of allergic potential, there is nothing that you love less. The quicker the season begins, the longer it lasts. And of course I'm talking about airborne allergens. Half the audience is not only along like yuh huh, while the other half is all wait and then your lungs do what. It's one thing when you accidentally consume nuts or seafood and your throat squeezes as tight as an anus. It is quite another when the source of your suffocation travels silently and invisibly through the air without your knowledge. Airborne allergens cause shortness of breath, breathing difficulties, sneezing, coughing, wheezing, which is annoying because, as I have pointed out previously, we love breathing. And how does your body decide what's going to kill you this way? This nature? Really pretty much all plants require pollination is how they reproduce pollen. Pollen everywhere. The thing is, though your body might mistakenly identify pollen as a threat and release chemicals that cause your body to create all these crazy symptom And I'm really under selling it here. The panic that comes from feelings of suffocation is more than annoying, and constant fear and anxiety about your next potential reaction can really take a toll on your mental well being. I myself only just developed plan analogies in the last few years, and it's pretty miserable stuff, and it's definitely made me sympathetic to sufferers. What happened that day in Melbourne was a perfect storm for allergens. Rye grass pollen swept in from the countryside. See the grasslands north and west of Melbourne are basically hay fever factories. So what made this so different, Well, the pollen was swept in from the countryside and became saturated with water. Normally, when something wants to insinuate itself into your respiratory track, first, it's got to get through your lungs. So think of your lungs kind of like a rushing nesting doll of smaller and smaller alveola all the way down that filter air and particles based on size. And that is why we are now going to reveal the real wizard behind the creating all this chaos thunder storm asthma. Wait are you saying people can be allergic to thunder and lightning while one's just a sound and the others just light So no, no, what we are talking about is a pretty benign dance of nature that was weaponized by circumstance. Following the disaster, authorities and healthcare providers conducted three separate investigations to try to understand what the hell happened. In this particular storm, moisture in the air caused grains to swell, while the excess humidity caused them to rupture. That is the best exclamation. All those tiny fragments of grain pollen were picked up and dispersed by the heavy winds, while the excess humidity caused them to rupture into smaller and smaller parts. That's the best explanation. All those tiny fragments of grain pollen were picked up and dispersed by the heavy winds. The thing is normally, because it's all wet and heavy, it eventually just blurps back down to earth and it stays put. But these particular winds concentrated it all back down and a round ground level, and it hung in the air much longer than normally would, just waiting to get hoovered up by an unsuspecting population. It was a perfect set of conditions to basically supercharge and aerosolize allergens. It created what they call a more potent airway response. Even people with asthma were completely unprepared for the sudden severity of symptoms, and because the pollen had been reduced and multiplied, all those mini pollens, fungal spores, mold, and other allergens. Let them bounce around the aveoli and your lungs like plinko disks on the price's right, and once they care plunk into place, they inflame the airways. So if you have no empathy or fear to this point, I can change that. All you have to do is grab a simple straw, place it in your mouth and only breathe through that straw for the next couple of hours. In fact, I'll go so far as to say, start timing yourself. See how long you can functionally or emotionally last before panic sets in. And you see how that panic or fear makes things immediately and exponentially worse when you're trying to breathe. Thousands of people dropped from across Melbourne, unable to get enough oxygen to function this thunderstorm. Asthma is uncommon in the United States. It's happened before in England and Italy, but nothing like what was happening here in Melbourne. And the sad thing is, if you have any kind of respiratory health challenge, you don't need me to tell you that things have only become worse over time. What we call allergy season is starting earlier, it's lasting longer, and it definitely feels more potent, and thunderstorms are becoming more intense with heavier rains and stronger winds. And if you're wondering what doctors and pharmacists knew about thunderstorm asthma heading into this disaster, not much. The concept of thunderstorm asthma is pretty unheard of globally, but not for long. Remember where you heard about it? First incident in Melbourne resulted in improved forecasting and monitoring of pollen levels now that Paullen had some street cred. Enhanced public alerts were also a good step. It also meant that healthcare and emergency workers are now better equipped and trained to handle similar emergencies in the future. A little heard of story from a little thought of part of a little thought of country. No offense to Australia. If I were you, I'd probably prefer it that way too. The Melbourne armageddon of nineteen ninety two was remembered by Australians as more than just a deadly and invisible, short lived panic, more than just one more thing to heap onto the list of things that will kill you quickly. And unexpectedly while living there. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this happened in Australia, and that means this is just one more in a long list of fascinating things about Australia that no one outside of the country seemingly cares about. Truth is, even if thunderstorm asthma made people's head explode into fetty like hunks of gore and it was all set to music, it still might not really have penetrated into the news cycle overseas. If you can't make people get excited about nuclear armed terrorists and the first world leader eaten by a shark while in office, you cannot hold their attention about anything, and you certainly can't expect them to pay attention to the single most catastrophic and lethal thunderstorm asthma epidemic in world history. The event, caused by a combination of high pollen and strong winds and high temperatures and air moisture before a cold front, helped unlock a new fear for the Australian people. Let that sink in in a country with so many lethal predators flying, swimming and wriggling around. We have added plant life to the list of things that will actually take a go at you. As disasters go, this one was one of the rarer ones where there is plenty to learn but no one to blame. The threat wasn't well understood at the time, and the resources for handling an emergency of the scale simply weren't there. And that's the spooky cherry to top this episode. No matter where you live, if a sudden catastrophe struck even a few thousand people, I would count on your local emergency responders and hospitals to become overwhelmed. But you can't blame them because no city can afford to have unlimited beds and medical staff on call at all hours of the day just in case. No city prioritizes healthcare above all else. Meteorologists predicted a storm that turned into a nothing burger that turned out to be a trojan horse for a jacked up respiratory issue that hit a city of over four million with all the cost and consequence of a terrorist attack. I'd like to remind you that meteorology is the only job that you can do wrong eighty percent at a time with no consequence. And remember it's stories like today's that remind us that Earth is Nature's house and we are just tenants. You can echo to me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as Doomsday Podcast or fire, or an email to Doomsday Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also on TikTok as doomsday dot dot dot podcast. Older episodes can be found wherever you found this one, and while you're there, please leave us a review and tell your friends. If you want to support the ongoing production of the show, you can find us at Patreon dot com slash funeral Kazoo or buy me a Coffee dot com slash Doomsday. But if you can spare the money and had to choose, we ask you to consider making a donation to Global Medic. Global Medic is a rapid response agency of Canadian volunteers offering assistance around the world to aid in the aftermath of disasters and crises. They are often the first and sometimes the only team to get critical interventions to people in life threatening situations, and to date they have helped over three point six million people across seventy seven different countries. You can learn more and donate at Global Medic dot ca. On the next episode, choose an executor of your state, update your will and Hug your loved ones a little extra tight. We're going camping. It's the Lo sal Foccas camp site disaster of nineteen seventy eight. We'll talk soon. Safety goggles off, and thanks for listening.