Paramedics and hospitals were stretched to their limits as thousands of people called in saying they were having difficulties breathing.
Victoria ran out of ambulances last night as more than 1,870 calls were logged in between 18:00 (07:00 GMT) and 23:00 on Monday, a staggering 450 percent increase in emergency calls, reports Australia’s herald Sun.
The emergency was so severe that extra staff was called back to hospitals, first responders were called in and the Victoria Police Department took on the job of doing security checks on people. Two private hospitals in the area, Cabrini, and the Epworth, opened their emergency rooms to the overflow of public patients.
Health Minister Jill Hennessy said claims that two people died while waiting for an ambulance will be investigated. “No doubt, there will be lessons to learn, there always are in these cases, but every part of our emergency management surge occurred correctly,” Hennessy said.
Hope Carneval, a 20-year-old is one of those who died. According to the family, she lay on the front lawn, unresponsive for 30 minutes before the ambulance arrived. And 18-year-old Omar Moujalled, a high school student from Greenvale, died at a doctor’s office before he could reach the hospital.
The BBC is reporting that a spokesman for Ambulance Victoria said: “Our thoughts are with the families of those patients. We will carry out a full clinical review into these cases.”
What is thunderstorm asthma?
Melbourne, Australia is known as the “allergy capital of the world,” and the “thunderstorm capital of the world,” says Deakin University’s Associate Professor Cenk Suphioglu. He is credited with discovered the phenomenon called “thunderstorm asthma” in 1992.
It is also known that one in ten people living in Australia have asthma and 80 percent of those sufferers experience allergies, especially to rye grasses, according to 9News.
Dr. Clifford Bassett, founder and medical director of Allergy and Asthma Care of New York, told weather.com., “Either during or after a thunderstorm mold spores, grass, and pollen can get fractured or broken up and sometimes if you inhale those, it can trigger allergy symptoms. It’s been described… right after a thunderstorm, people can have more asthma.”
The Asthma, Allergy and Immunology Institute (AAII) in Michigan says that “it is the airflow patterns in thunderstorms and not the electrical activity, thunder itself or rain that trigger asthma epidemics.” Pollen and mold spores are swept up into the clouds where they are broken down into tiny particles and released with the rainfall.
The tiny particles are readily breathed in and go deep into the airway passages. “A person who has an allergic response to that particular pollen, because it’s so small, it will get into the lungs,” Asthma Victoria chief Robin Ould told the BBC.
And the rye grass pollen count was extremely high in Melbourne yesterday, coming in at 102, more than double what would be considered high on a normal day.
