‘Robbed of Survival’: Emergency Hotline Outage Leaves Lives on the Line in Victoria

A row of Ambulances are seen lined up outside the North Melbourne Public Housing tower complex in Melbourne, Australia on July 8, 2020. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

An outage of the Australian emergency telephone number or Triple Zero at Telstra’s national call centre plunged Victorians into “chaos” overnight, according to the Victorian Ambulance Union.

During the hour-long outage, Telstra operators could answer calls but could not transfer them to Triple Zero call centres in multiple states, including Victoria.

Between 3.30 a.m. and 4.45 a.m., the Union confirmed a patient in Melbourne died, though it is unclear if the outage contributed.

Union secretary Danny Hill said crews characterised the malfunction as “complete chaos.”

“We’ve had issues with incorrect routing of calls from Telstra to the wrong control room, particularly in cross-border areas,” Mr. Hill told ABC radio.

“They were dispatched to cases without having a lot of detail because they couldn’t get that detail through email.”

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The service malfunction caused Telstra operators to email referrals, some of which were not received by Triple Zero Victoria operators until after 7 a.m.

“In many cases [the email] would get to the crew after the crew actually arrived on the scene. So that leads to a lot of problems with things like occupational violence risk,” Mr. Hill said.

“When these things happen, you’ve really robbed a lot of people of the chance to survive,” he said, pointing to the patient who died after unsuccessful resuscitation from cardiac arrest.

Telstra Admits Unknown “Issue”

Telstra issued a statement acknowledging an unknown issue on Mar. 1 that affected calls and associated data being transferred to emergency service operators.

“It was fixed within 90 minutes,” the telecommunication giant said.

“Our team of call takers switched to our backup process, which meant the details of callers were sent manually to emergency services to be called back.”

Telstra said it is looking into the cause of the issue and closely monitoring the system.

During the outage, Telstra operators asked callers dialling in which Triple Zero service they needed: police, fire, or ambulance.

The connection mishap then saw Triple Zero Victoria’s call-takers fail to ask callers two all-important questions: “Where is your emergency?” and “What is your emergency?”

Communication Workers Union representative Sue Riley said Telstra’s call takers captured as much information as possible.

“Telstra was able to identify the phone number or the call line identification,” she said.

She mentioned that around 4:15 a.m., Telstra opted to send bulk emails containing the phone numbers and information heard during the calls.

“They did the best they could with the resources that they had,” she said.

The Epoch Times has contacted Triple Zero Victoria for comment.

Victorian Liberals Slam Telstra Over Triple Zero Delays

It’s not the first time Telstra has come under fire, with the Victorian Liberal Party previously accusing the telecommunications company of causing delays in Triple Zero Victoria answering calls by reducing staff numbers for handling emergencies.

The right-wing party previously warned that reports have shown Victoria’s Triple Zero crisis is severe enough to potentially affect emergency response in other states across the nation.

“Victorians want to know that when they call for an ambulance, their call will be answered and an ambulance will arrive,” Emergency Services Shadow Minister Brad Battin said.