A Melbourne man who suffered a heart attack during the Optus outage is considered lucky to be alive after his colleague was unable to contact triple-0.
Key points:
- A colleague of a man suffering a heart attack could not get through to triple-0 during the Optus outage
- She said she had to wave down passing cars for assistance
- The former Optus CEO told a Senate inquiry that 228 triple-0 calls could not get through during the outage
Chris, 68, who has requested not to use his full name, was at work on Wednesday, November 8, when he told colleague Fiona Mitchell he was not feeling well.
“He kept saying he wanted to go home,” Ms Mitchell said.
Ms Mitchell told Chris, who works in logistics, she would take him to hospital, which was only a short drive away.
But while they were travelling, his health quickly deteriorated.
“He undid his seatbelt and collapsed on the nature strip,” Ms Mitchell said.
Ms Mitchell knew there was an Optus outage but remembered hearing that triple-0 calls should still have worked.
“That’s why I felt confident to drive to the hospital because I thought the call would go through,” she said.
“But I called triple-0 — and nothing.”
While Chris was on the nature strip on Eastfield Road in Croydon, Ms Mitchell started to wave down passing cars, holding out her hand in the shape of an “0” in the hope someone would urgently stop.
Ms Mitchell said a few people pulled over and were able to contact triple-0 while an off-duty paramedic sat with Chris until an ambulance arrived.
After Chris received initial treatment, the paramedics told Ms Mitchell her colleague was having a heart attack.
“It was a lot to take in,” Ms Mitchell said.
‘So lucky’ to survive
Chris’s partner Robyn also had an Optus phone, so she did not know what was happening until another one of his colleagues arrived at her front door.
“By the time we got up to the cardiac ward, Chris was already in intensive care and having a stent put in,” Robyn said.
“It’s all about quick action. We were just so lucky.”
Chris has since been discharged from hospital and is recovering at home with a new resolve to “go about things a bit more slowly”.
Chris, Robyn, and Ms Mitchell were all grateful to those who stopped to help, along with the medical staff at Box Hill Hospital, but they could not help but think about what could have happened.
“We were lucky we were on a busy road,” Ms Mitchell said.
“If it had been in a quiet street, or anywhere else, it would have been a different outcome.
“But we should’ve never had this situation [where triple-0 was down] in the first place.”
Case ‘escalated’ by Optus
Ms Mitchell contacted Optus and said they asked about Chris’s welfare and “escalated” her case, but she has not heard anything since.
Robyn said she has not had the chance to contact Optus as she has been busy with medical appointments.
But she was unimpressed by the offer via email of 200-gigabytes of free data, and the fact the telco had not attempted to reach out to her and Chris directly.
“We’re pretty disgusted with the whole way it’s been handled,” Robyn said.
“I know there are no guarantees that everyone is going to get through to triple-0 on absolutely every occasion.
“But to me, it’s the lack of humanity and compassion.”
She said she and Chris will move to a different telco when they have the time to do it.
The ABC has contacted Optus for comment.
Hundreds of calls stymied
Former Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who resigned in the wake of the outage, told a Senate inquiry last week that a total of 228 calls to triple-0 were unable to go through during the outage.
She said Optus had conducted “welfare checks” on all of those 228 people, and said everyone was “OK”.
But Ms Bayer Rosmarin said the triple-0 system should have picked up calls from Optus customers through other networks.
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