Dust storm brings the Outback to Australia's coastal fringe (Roundup)

Sep 23, 2009, 13:56 GMT

   Sydney - A shroud of red dust blown in from the Outback blanketed Sydney and Brisbane on Wednesday, causing chaos at airports and raising health fears among city-dwellers unused to the vagaries of Australia's weather.

   The miasma cleared and skies returned to their normal deep blue after what the Bureau of Meteorology said was the worst dust storm to hit the east coast in 70 years.

   'An event like this is extremely rare. It's one of the worst, if not the worst,' said the bureau's Barry Hanstrum.

   At dawn in Sydney visibility was so low that the Opera House was obscured even from the nearby Harbour Bridge. The ochre dusting was so thick that flights in and out of Sydney were cancelled and all commuter ferries were confined to port.

   A caller to national broadcaster ABC who cycled her suburb to take in the moonscape said she had come back with an orange patina of dust that left her 'looking like a red panda.'

   Beth Armour, who walked her Shetland Terriers as usual, said they arrived back home looking like Border Terriers because of their orange dusting.

   Chris Eiser, an officer at the Environment Department, said pollution readings had been off the charts.

   'Particles we measured today are the highest we have measured since we started monitoring in the 1970s,' he said, noting that from a normal 15-micrograms-per-cubic-metre the concentration had shot up to 15,000 micrograms per cubic metre.

   John Lees, also from the Environment Department, said gale force winds had lifted topsoil 1,200 kilometres west of Sydney and carried it along an 800-kilometre front to the coast.

   He said that at the height of the storm, 4,000 tons of dust an hour - enough to fill 4,000 containers - was sweeping over Australia's biggest city and into the Pacific Ocean.

   'This is a very, very large event,' Lees said. 'People become awe-inspired by them because they are so rare but because they also have such a large impact on your daily life.'

   One panicked resident thought North Korea had sent over nuclear missiles while others put down the pink tinge to seasonal forest fires that had begun early.

   Andy Pitman, director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales told the German Press Agency dpa that the event had nothing to do with climate change.

   'People often don't differentiate between what is a weather phenomenon and what is the result of climate change - this is just a normal, natural weather event.'

   Environmental Health director Wayne Smith urged asthmatics, pregnant women and those with cardiovascular problems to stay indoors. He urged parents with children who had health problems to keep them home.

   Gordian Fulde, head of emergency medicine at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, said there had been a spike in admissions because of the dust storm.

   'We've had joggers come in - fit young men and women who have just had real trouble breathing - and we've had to treat them,' he said.

   For most of Sydney's 4 million residents, the dust storm was just a taste of normal life in the Outback.

   Tim Wooliscroft, who drove the 300 kilometres into Sydney from Bathurst, said cityslickers were getting a taste of what life was like for those in rural area.

   'When I set off my car was green and now it's brown,' Wooliscroft said before starting his journey back west to Bathursts. 'But it's not something we worry about. It's just life.'