Triple-0 call service offline for hours in system crash
Victoria’s fatally-flawed triple-0 call taking service crashed overnight, with calls unanswered while the system was “totally down”.
Victoria’s fatally-flawed triple-0 system crashed again overnight.
Several emergency services sources have told the Herald Sun the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority’s computer-aided dispatch was hit by problems on Tuesday evening.
“For a very short period of time the system was totally down,” one source said.
Another said: “ESTA went down last night … that means there was no one answering triple-0 calls for a period of time … scary,” one source said.
An email from Ambulance Victoria sent about 8.45pm referenced the “statewide ESTA CAD outage”.
A follow up email said the “system returned to stability at approximately 0130 hours”.
Several sources said the system was still not fully operational this morning but said there was a “workaround” in place.
Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes confirmed on Wednesday ESTA would undertake an investigation into why its call and dispatch service failed.
Ms Symes said she was in “constant contact” with ESTA acting CEO Deb Abbott throughout the night as well as this morning about the system crash.
She said call takers activated their backup system – a manual operation – which went “very well”.
“ESTA will continue to investigate the causes of that (original service crashing),” she said.
“Of course we don’t want systems going down, they will seek answers to that, but the backup system worked well.
“There were no adverse events.
“The system is back up and running and calls are coming through.”
Ms Symes maintained that all calls to triple-0 were still answered despite the shutdown.
She said she was first notified of the issue at 9.30pm, and was advised the service was fully operational again by about 1am.
ESTA officials have conceded a worst-case scenario could lead to multiple deaths in the event of a main system failure.
The state government last year launched a tender process to build an improved back-up service for ESTA’s CAD.
“ESTA’s Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system is at the core of ESTA’s ability to receive emergency calls, dispatch first responders, co-ordinate, and communicate with the respective
Emergency Service Organisations (ESOs),” ESTA said in the tender documents.
Last month a damning review into triple-0 revealed 33 Victorians had died after call taking and ambulance delays.
The review, from the Inspector General for Emergency Management (IGEM), detailed the devastating impact of the pandemic, record call numbers and “longstanding” funding issues.
Of the thousands of delays, the review identified 40 emergencies between December 2020 and May 2022, where people potentially died or were harmed because of call delays or, in three cases, ambulance resourcing or dispatch issues.
Thirty-three patients from these events died, but the IGEM noted only the Coroner could determine whether an earlier response would have saved them.
Shadow Minister for Emergency Services, Brad Battin, said the system was broken.
“Again triple-0 has failed, and again we know the backup system is at risk of total collapse,” he said.
“For years, Daniel Andrews has ignored the warnings to fix triple-zero and now at least 33 people have died as a consequence.
“13 hours later and the system is still down.
“This is exactly why the Liberals and Nationals will invest an extra $125 million to upgrade the Computer Assisted Dispatch system and provide a state-of-the-art back up system.”
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