Man dies with frightening speed after bite from 1.5m brown snake

A man died on Friday from what’s thought to have been an eastern brown snake bite, underlining the importance of knowing how to treat a snake bite victim.

The ABC and other media outlets reported that the Townsville man in his 40s was walking and talking, and even holding the snake in question in his hands, before suddenly collapsing. Paramedics were unable to revive him. 

The man’s neighbour, Brett Boggs, revealed to the ABC that the bite victim asked him if he could identify the snake, saying that he’d been bitten on his finger but was unsure if the snake was venomous.

“He went down the road and asked someone down there and they said something about a tree snake, so he didn’t think too much of it and within a few minutes [a woman] was yelling for help,” Boggs said of the speed of the man’s reaction from one minute being sufficiently well to ask him what type of snake he believed it was, to the next minute collapsing in the street.

Ambulance officers called to the scene attempted to revive the man but were unsuccessful. The Courier Mail reported that the snake had since been identified as a 1.5-metre-long eastern brown snake. The eastern brown, also known as the common brown snake, is considered the world’s second-most venomous snake.

The man is not the first person to be killed by a brown snake this year – a 24-year-old man was bitten, also on the finger, while trying to protect his dogs from the snake at home in Tamworth, New South Wales, in January and died less than an hour later. And in February, a heavily pregnant woman and her unborn child died after being bitten by a western brown snake in Meekatharra in Western Australia. According to reports, between 2000 and 2016, 35 Australians had died from snake bites – and the brown snake was responsible for 25 of those deaths..

The Townsville man’s family told 7 News that the man had been trying to scare the snake away from his dogs underneath their house when it bit him on the hand. Dan Bamblett from Hands on Wildlife told 7 News that the incident involved two serious mistakes – never interact with a snake, even if it is in an attempt to prevent it from harming pets, and never try to identify the type of snake involved in the bite, but to call emergency services immediately for assistance.

On the Townsville Snake Catchers public Facebook group, users were encouraged to take the time to learn the best first aid response to a snake bite.

The St John Ambulance cautions that all known and suspected snake bites must be treated as potentially life-threatening and thus requiring urgent medical attention. Don’t wash venom off the skin or clothes, St John advises. Instead, ensure the patient remains still and, if bitten on a limb, apply an elasticised bandage over the bite site, and another bandage from the extremity of the limb (the fingers or toes), winding it upward on the bitten limb as far and as tightly as possible. Then, immobilise the limb with splints.

Would you know what to do in the event of a snake bite? Have you been bitten by a snake?