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

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....