Another example of corporate greed hurting the earth and people.

source

On the 9th February, disaster stuck the Latrobe Valley [Australia], a bushfire surging from Hernes Oak on an extreme fire day sparked a fire in a disused part of an open cut brown coal mine owned by GDF SUEZ Australian Energy.

It has come to light that this part of the mine was supposed to be capped and re-mediated to prevent fire… but it was not. It has come to light that there should have been fire safety infrastructure in place while the coal was exposed… but it was not.

The township of Morwell and surrounding areas were continuously exposed to sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and PM2.5 particulates for over ten days before any sort of (extremely limited) funds were made available from the government. Masks were not distributed by the government, it was left up to charities and local pharmacists. Transportation and civic shelter was not offered until well after smoke and particulate exposure had reached dangerous levels.

Why are there huge gaps in the EPA data? What do they not want us to know? They demand that we have access to ALL of the information to what they are breathing in every day.

Latrobe Regional Hospital is underfunded at the best of times, and with a surge of respiratory ailments even more so - they demand increased funding to the hospital.

They are told to leave by governing bodies but were given no real assistance to do so. They demand the government to stop ignoring them and give them real options for their future, their health and their families.

What they are fighting for is full accountability from GDF Suez for placing the bottom line before the safety of the community that has supported them - they want answers, they demand to know why the mine was not capped? Where did the sprinkler infrastructure go?

They demand that they need to be compensated for loss of housing value, loss of income, relocation expenses and medical expenses, now and in the future.

They call upon union support and the support of community organisations to mobilise for this rally.

People in 3rd world countries deal with this sort of crap all the time. It isnt such a "in one ear out the other" bit of news when it happens in your own backyard. Even though it is 300 kms away the volunteer firefighters from my town have been there a couple of times doing 10 hour shifts with our own tanker bought with money raised by our town. Make the bastards pay through the nose!

reply to post by Cinrad


This seems more like mother nature doing what she does best. Lots of talk about people suffering because of this but who raped the land in the first place?

Give it a thousand years or so and there could be a beautiful forest there.

reply to post by Cinrad


The fact that the mine was not capped is a disgraceful balls up on the part of the company, but the government should have stepped in much faster to deal with the unfolding crisis, and mitigate its effects on local towns, and their populations. The fact that this did not happen however, is hardly surprising. Many governments refuse to deal with crisis situations until well after the point where serious damage has been inflicted, simply because they would rather retain as much resource as they can, and deal with the fallout if that tactic fails, than expedite matters in good order.

One wonders why, and I suppose some awful twit in a suit would argue that if they called all hands to the pumps at the merest hint of trouble, every time, that their books would cease to look healthy, and the economy would suffer. I believe, however, that as shown by both this incident in Oz, and flooding related issues here in Blighty, getting maximum manpower and resource to work in the shortest possible time, is more effective than handwringing over cost until the damage is done, before acting.

reply to post by TrueBrit


I dont know what it was like in UK before this winter, but here we could rely on the government to help out in a disaster or crisis. I think what happened has taken us by surprise. Was there a similar feeling in the US before Katrina?

I can understand that the cost to evacuate Morwell would be immense, it is a town of a few thousand. So instead of doing the right thing by the people of Morwell, who provide most of the electricity for the 4 million people who live in the state of Victoria, they let them choke. They even hid the epa air quality data. We are not used to government acting like that, I know I read about it here every day on ATS, but it is the first time I have seen it happen here. It was only a matter of time of course.