Optus failed to follow protocol after it only contacted WA Police late Thursday evening about an outage affecting triple-0 calls, and only informed them of less than 20 per cent of total cases in the state, the WA acting premier says.
The outage, which began on Thursday morning and lasted for 13 hours, meant around 600 calls to triple-0 in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory failed to get through.
Two deaths in WA have been linked to the outage, a 74-year-old man in Willetton and a 49-year-old man in Kensington, both suburbs in Perth’s south-east, as well as two deaths in South Australia.
WA Police have referred both its state’s cases to the coroner for investigation.
Optus outage ‘unlikely’ to have caused baby boy’s death, police say
Optus chief executive officer Stephen Rue told a press conference yesterday he only became aware of the issue around 1:30 pm AEST Thursday.
Acting WA Premier Rita Saffioti said Optus contacted WA Police just after 9:00 pm AWST on Thursday, nine-and-a-half hours later, and informed them of 26 emergency calls that had not gone through.
“The fact that emergency services were not notified when the outage commenced is the most significant issue,” she said.
“There are protocols that, should an outage occur, then the state emergency services need to be notified.
“No one knew about it, that meant people were not prepared in case of emergency.”
Ms Saffioti said WA authorities only learned there were, in fact, 149 emergency calls in WA during a press conference held by the company’s CEO late Friday.
WA Police Commander Jodie Pearson said they were informed by Optus of 26 failed 000 calls at 9:04PM AWST on Thursday and officers sprang into action.
“The information that the West Australian Police Force received was that it was a minor outage, that services had been fully restored and that there was 26 calls for the WA Police force to check,” Commander Pearson said.
The next update WA Police received was an email from Optus on Friday, the following afternoon at 2:47pm AWST, giving them details of another 123 missed triple-0 calls and that one person had died.
WA Police Commander Jodie Pearson. (ABC News: Rebecca Trigger)
It was only in the second round of welfare checks by WA Police that the second West Australian man was located deceased.
Commander Pearson said any delay in providing emergency services assistance to the community during an outage was critical.
“We treat every missed … triple-0 call, with the utmost urgency,” she said.
“As soon as we were advised of an outage, our first and primary concern was to make sure those people were safe.”
She said Optus had been responsive to requests for further information, but WA Police would push for more information to be provided by telcos to emergency services in such scenarios.
“It’s really important to know who the subscriber of that handset is, what the service is and where they’re calling from so we can make sure we’ve got the appropriate resource to be able to find that person,” Commander Pearson said.
‘A terrible failure’
Ms Saffioti said she has received briefings from the heads of emergency services departments, including police.
She said it was clear from those briefings that the protocols, established following an outage in 2023, regarding notifications after outages were not followed.
“I was shocked to find out exactly the extent of that failure. These things should not happen, and my sincere condolences go out to the two families involved,” Ms Saffioti said.
“This is a terrible failure.
“When you dial that triple-0 number it means you need that emergency support, it means you’re in an emergency situation and I feel for those families involved.”
Rita Saffioti has raised questions over the delay in Optus informing WA Police about the outage. (ABC News)
Optus had commenced an upgrade on its firewall in the early hours of Thursday morning, which is believed to have caused the fault.
Ms Saffioti said she would leave the question of whether the Optus CEO should step down to him.
“I’ll leave that for the Optus CEO …. I do acknowledge, in the previous outage, the Optus CEO resigned after that,” Ms Saffioti said.
Mr Rue said Optus was conducting its own welfare checks on Thursday afternoon, prior to contacting WA Police.
Do you know more about this story? Contact Rebecca Trigger.
“As we go through those welfare checks … we make two calls, we make two attempts to contact, and then where we’re not able to contact, we then pass that on to police,” he said.
Mr Rue said a “multiplicity” of stakeholders, including state and territory government agencies, were contacted “at a range of times”.
He said “many” of these were notified before he held a press conference on Friday.
Although he conceded the South Australian premier’s office was contacted “around” the same time as his press conference.
Ms Saffioti declined to comment on whether the government was considering removing the beleaguered national telco’s naming rights to the 60,0000-seat flagship Perth Stadium.
“It’s clear that Optus have failed the West Australian public, have not put in the protocols they were meant to put in in relation to notification, once these lines went down,” she said.
“My focus currently is understanding what transpired and sending my condolences to the families.”
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