Thunderstorm asthma kills sixth person in Melbourne

The patient, who had been in a critical condition, died in an Eastern Health hospital on Saturday night as a result of thunderstorm asthma causing other “medical complications”, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Five people remain on life support with three in a critical condition a week after heavy winds and rain hit Australia’s second-largest city.  The extreme weather on Monday night spread tiny pollen particles across the city, triggering a rare condition known as thunderstorm asthma.

“There have now been six deaths that may have occurred as a result of conditions relating to the thunderstorm asthma events on Monday,” the health department said in a statement on Sunday.

It said another 12 patients were still in hospitals with less serious respiratory and related conditions.

Monday evening’s thunderstorm saw extreme winds and air moisture break pollen particles up into small enough pieces to enter people’s lungs.

Four of the victims have been named as Noble Park father-of-two Clarence Leo, 35-year-old Apollo Papadopoulos, law student Hope Carnevali, 20, and year 12 student Omar Moujalled.

The inspector general for emergency management will investigate the cause of those deaths and his findings will form part of an overarching review that will examine how Ambulance Victoria and emergency services responded to and how the community was notified of the unfolding crisis.

Around 8,500 people received hospital treatment in total, with a third of patients who suffered asthma attacks on Monday night reporting never having had asthma before.

Local emergency services said they took six times more calls than the daily average between 6pm and 11pm local time.

“It was extraordinarily busy, it was unprecedented,” Mick Stephenson, Ambulance Victoria's executive director of emergency operations, told the BBC.

He said about 200 calls were directly linked to asthma, but 600 more reported respiratory issues.

“What we do know is that a lot of people who called last night had never had asthma before, so this was their first experience,” he said.

The world's first recorded thunderstorm asthma event occurred in Melbourne in 1987, when hospitals reported a five-fold increase in asthma cases. Similar events have taken place in the United States, Canada, Britain and Italy. The last major occurrence in Melbourne was in November 2010.

Before this week, the largest known outbreak was in London in June 1994, when hospitals were inundated by 640 patients seeking emergency treatment for asthma and other breathing problems.