Investigation into Death at Regional Hospital Amid Telstra Outage Claims
South Australian police are investigating the death of a person at a regional hospital on Wednesday, after Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle said the individual had died during a nationwide Telstra outage. The exact circumstances surrounding the death remain unclear, and authorities have not confirmed a direct link to the outage.
In a statement, SA Police said they attended Senator Liddle's office on Thursday and spoke with her and her staff. "As a result, contact was subsequently made with the family of an individual who died at a regional hospital on Wednesday 8 July," the statement read. "Police were not notified of the death. After being advised of the death, police immediately commenced an investigation into the cause and circumstances."
SA Health directed inquiries to SA Police, who declined to comment further. No additional information — including the person's age, gender, or when and where the death occurred — has been publicly released.
Senator's Social Media Post
Senator Liddle took to Facebook on Wednesday night, stating that her office had received "a report of a tragic death following an apparent failure to connect to Triple Zero." She wrote: "This death of an elderly South Australian represents a devastating failure for their family. Our thoughts are with them. No Australian should ever be unable to connect to Triple Zero when their life depends on it."
In an initial response to the senator's post, SA Police commented that they were "not aware of any death in South Australia today as a result of the Telstra nationwide outage."
The post prompted public exchanges involving Senator Liddle, police, SA Police Minister Michael Brown, and Attorney-General Kyam Maher. Earlier today, Mr Maher told 891 ABC Adelaide that the SA Ambulance Service had reviewed its records and could not find any death related to the outage. He described the senator's post as "deeply irresponsible."
Telstra's Response
Telstra said it has no record of Triple Zero (000) calls made from phone numbers associated with the address of the person who died. In a press conference on Friday morning, Telstra spokesperson Mr Ackland said the company had conducted a detailed review of its network records.
"To date, we can see no record of calls from those numbers accessing Telstra's mobile network to call Triple Zero and, more broadly, no record of any calls from those numbers to the Triple Zero platform," Mr Ackland said. "We've also confirmed there were no active outages affecting the local area at the time and our records show good mobile signal strength at that location. We can see that a related call was successfully made to Triple Zero from another number which was connected and transferred to the relevant emergency authority correctly."
Mr Ackland said Telstra was assisting SA authorities in their investigation, "including whether there is any connection to Wednesday's outage."
Police Commissioner's Comments
SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens provided further details on Friday morning, telling radio station FiveAA: "Our understanding is that a person was conveyed to a regional hospital. That person's spouse did try to call using Triple Zero for an ambulance. That didn't go through, so they utilised another phone."
Commissioner Stevens added: "We have an obligation to investigate so we'll prepare a report for the coroner and that'll take into account all of the circumstances and it will be a matter for the coroner to decide what the implications are."
A spokesperson for the SA Ambulance Service said today that an ambulance was sent after receiving a call, but further details were not provided.