Police give major update after outage death
UPDATED: SA Police have revealed a major finding about a death previously believed to have been caused by the triple-zero outage.
A police investigation has confirmed a claim about a death occurring in SA due to the triple-zero outage was incorrect.
SA Police said it would not disclose details of the circumstances that led to the death of a Goolwa woman, but that investigations revealed calls were connected to triple-zero.
It comes after Senator Kerrynne Liddle said her office was alerted to the South Australian’s death after apparently being unable to connect to emergency services.
The police investigation revealed that the deceased woman’s partner “did have difficulties contacting some relatives once he was at the hospital” and “it now appears that these difficulties may have been misinterpreted”.
“At 10am on Wednesday 8 July the woman’s partner found her in an unresponsive state following a medical episode,” SA Police said in a statement on Friday afternoon.
“Her partner called a neighbour using his Telstra mobile phone. The call connected. The neighbour, who had medical experience, attended instantly and assessed the woman.
“As a result the neighbour called 000 using her Telstra mobile phone and requested an ambulance. This call also connected without issue.
“An ambulance arrived shortly afterwards and the woman was transported to a local hospital. The woman passed away several hours after arriving at the hospital.”
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SA Police said investigations by Telstra confirmed these events.
“This is a distressing time for the family of the deceased woman. They have lost a cherished member of their family and are grieving,” the SA Police statement said.
“It is unfortunate their loved one’s death was placed in the public arena in the manner it was when it need not have been.”
On Friday afternoon, Senator Kerrynne Liddle released a statement apologising to the family, after she had posted the claim to her social media on Wednesday.
“To the family who have lost a loved one, I offer my sincere apologies for what you have been through and for any confusion to the broader community,” Liddle said.
“The concerns raised were based on information available at the time. SAPOL has acknowledged this was a complicated matter and the information provided by the Police Commissioner differed from statements made publicly earlier in the day.
“I spoke to the family and the daughter of the lady who passed away this afternoon. They should now have peace and privacy.”
Liddle said her office had been told a South Australian resident had died after apparently being unable to connect to triple-zero. Liddle posted the claim to her social media on Wednesday.
SA Police said they had tried repeatedly to contact Liddle on Wednesday night. They finally spoke to her and one of her office staff on Thursday.
Earlier on Friday, SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens co-hosted the FiveAA breakfast radio program and said the death was “a matter for the coroner” after the police investigation.
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Stevens said he understood a person was “conveyed to a regional hospital” after a failed triple-zero call.
“We have an obligation to investigate that, so we’ll prepare a report for the Coroner, and that will take into account all the circumstances,” Stevens said.
“It will be a matter for the Coroner to decide what the implications are.”
Meanwhile, Telstra faces questions from the federal government about why it took hours to issue an alert about the nationwide outage.
Australia’s largest telco has finished all additional triple-zero welfare checks as the government demanded ”total transparency” over the outage.
The communications regulator is investigating Telstra’s widespread network disruption, which hit transport, businesses, emergency services and healthcare across the country.
The issue was largely resolved by mid-morning, and a solution for a separate “secondary issue” that prevented some users from making triple-zero calls was in place by Thursday afternoon.
Telstra advised customers to immediately retry emergency calls if they did not go through, with 639 welfare checks carried out.
A software issue affecting nodes responsible for keeping time across Telstra’s mobile network has been blamed for the outage.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Thursday night that the overwhelming majority of welfare checks had been done, with no adverse outcomes reported.
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland described the back-to-back technical mishaps as “an unfortunate incident” that was unacceptable to customers.
“Mobile networks are complex and we will continue to work through further changes to ensure we have the most robust solution but customers can feel confident in calling triple zero,” he said.
The company said overnight work had reduced the separate triple-zero error by about 90 per cent as engineers continued to eliminate the bug.
Ackland said of it’s 639 welfare checks since Wednesday morning, 402 cases required followed-up voice calls, with 170 calls passed to police.
Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said there were still gaps in the emergency communications system that needed immediate plugging.
“It’s fair to say the Telstra outage … shines a further light on the whole triple-zero ecosystem to work much more effectively for end users than it did,” she told ABC News on Thursday.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has begun preliminary investigations into the outage.
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