Optus outage: Police give major update on baby linked to triple-0 catastrophe

Police have determined the Optus triple-0 outage is unlikely to have contributed to the death of an eight-week-old baby, initially thought to be one of four people who died during the incident.

The update comes after the husband of a 68-year-old woman who died at home alone after he was unable to reach emergency services during the outage, spoke out about the tragedy.

“The deceased boy’s grandmother has told investigating police that she attempted to call 000 using her mobile phone when she was alerted to the fact her grandson was not breathing,” South Australian police said.

“When her call was not connected, she immediately used another mobile telephone in the house and was successfully connected to 000.

“The preliminary investigations indicate the child’s death is not due to any delay in SAAS (South Australia Ambulance Service) attending the Mulga Street house, despite the failure of the first attempt to call 000.”

The child’s death, and that of the 68-year-old woman, will be investigated by the State’s coroner who will determine if an inquest is held.

Two people died in WA during the outage, which disrupted more than 600 emergency calls in WA, South Australia and the Northern Territory — a 74-year-old man and a 49-year-old man — both of whom lived in the Perth metropolitan area.

The woman, from the Adelaide suburb of Queenstown, was home by herself when she suffered chest pains and contacted her husband, whose call to triple-0 was unable to get through to emergency services, according to the Adelaide Advertiser.

“On behalf of our family we mourn the loss of our Wife/Sister, we hope that the authorities are able to investigate the terrible circumstances so other families don’t experience a tragedy like this,” the husband said in a statement.

“We are saddened to hear of the loss of the young child and our hearts go out to the family and others that have been impacted by this event.”

As of Saturday night, WA Police had conducted 137 welfare checks of the 149 WA callers who could not get through on the emergency number.

Optus chief executive Stephen Rue is expected to give another update on Sunday afternoon.

“I am deeply saddened by this further news and extend my heartfelt condolences to the person’s family and friends,” Mr Rue said on Saturday.

Mr Cook was highly critical of the way Optus had handled the situation, saying the Federal Government needed to “investigate very carefully” to ensure Australians knew “their network will look after them”.

“Optus will need to answer to those families and I imagine there will be serious legal ramifications,” he said.

“This is a dreadful, dreadful tragedy, and it’s so disappointing that it has occurred, and it is so disappointing the way that the situation has been revealed, both to Government, to the authorities and to the public.

“This outage has put lives of Western Australians at risk, and my Government will stop at nothing until Optus has fully and clearly explained what has happened.

“Optus must be held accountable for this incident.”

He spoke directly with Mr Rue late on Saturday, having flagged with reporters: “I want to know what’s gone on, what’s gone wrong and why they thought it was appropriate to wait so long to keep people informed”.

Earlier, Mr Rue admitted at a press conference that two separate complaints about the service not working were made to the company’s contact centre about 9am AEST on Thursday but not acted upon.

The 13-hour outage lasted from about 1am to 2pm AEST.