Firefighters say access to last week’s industrial inferno in Melbourne was severely restricted because of “inner walls” of shipping containers set up in the warehouse, as authorities reveal the property was not registered to store highly-flammable chemicals.
WorkSafe Victoria said the West Footscray warehouse was not registered under the Dangerous Goods Act, which enables authorities to identify and monitor sites that contain combustible materials, poisons and other dangerous products.
The health and safety regulator, prompted by community concern after the huge blaze, launched a workplace blitz on Monday and said it found dozens of properties in the area that also failed to comply with the act.
“We’ve identified around 68 contraventions around the safe storage and handling of dangerous goods,” WorkSafe’s health and safety executive director Paul Fowler said.
“They’ve had poorly maintained manifests — which is the inventory of dangerous goods — they’ve had inadequate labelling, incompatible storage.”
Excavators needed to move stacked shipping containers
More than a week after it engulfed the 14,000 square metre building, the biggest fire Melbourne has seen in decades continues to be monitored by firefighting crews.
Hotspots remain, and the site is still not safe for investigators and arson squad detectives to enter.
The ABC has been told that access to the blaze has been hampered because shipping containers, stacked at least two-tiers high, prevented firefighters from shooting their hoses onto the source of the flames.
The hoses were only able to properly reach the centre of the blaze on Tuesday night, where hotspots continue to burn, after crews constructed a platform that protrudes into the building.
“Within the building there was a number of shipping containers, and they provided a bit of a barrier,” Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) Commander Bryan Currie said.
“The building was so large and our hose streams can only throw so far.
“These containers were also in the way, making it difficult to throw the water over the containers to the area behind.
“Over the last few days, they’ve had to bring excavators in to move some of those containers out of the way.”
Chemical drums ‘too many to count’
Assistant Chief Fire Officer Allan Braid said the inside of the warehouse was like nothing he’d ever seen, and not just because of the fire’s intensity.
“They [the containers] are sort of arranged in a rectangular configuration inside the factory,” he said.
“Then within that rectangular configuration there’s a lot of 44-gallon drums.
“So many 44-gallon drums that it’s impossible to count them. You can’t actually count them, there’s that many.”
He said the drums had been stacked four and five tiers high.
At 14,000 square metres, the warehouse is close in size to a small football oval.
The ABC revealed on Monday that a man familiar with the site estimated it could have contained up to 100,000 drums worth of chemicals.
He said each stack of drums was surrounded by other containers, which he did not believe contained chemicals.
Mr Braid said pressurised containers such as LP gas bottles, oxy-acetylene cylinders and spray cans were littered throughout the burnt-out shed.
“At this stage we’re still working closely with the owner to determine what sort of products are in there, so we haven’t got a definitive answer on what was stored in there at this stage,” he said.
New tenants took over the building in July, and the nature of their work was not known to those involved in other businesses in the area.
The site was previously occupied by a wooden pallets supply company, which was recently evicted after more than a decade at the premises.
Destruction of evidence could hamper investigation
Firefighters are now in the process of dousing the final hotspots and making the site safe for arson squad detectives and fire investigators to enter.
While fire investigators have declared the fire may be suspicious, police say they will not be able to determine that until they have access to the building.
An independent fire investigator says the intensity of the blaze means there may be little evidence left to work with.
“This is why you need to get as much eyewitness evidence as possible, especially from the early stages of the fire,” said Michael Weekes.
Police have called for anyone with footage of the fire or of the factory in the lead up to the fire to contact them
“Social media [will also be] reviewed, as this will give good time frames as to the progress of the fire,” Mr Weekes said.
Investigations are expected to take weeks to complete. ABC News
