Victoria triple zero power outage plunges the emergency network into chaos, critical computer system crashes

An “unplanned outage” of Victoria’s triple-0 dispatch system caused major disruptions overnight, forcing emergency operators to revert to pen-and-paper procedures for several hours.

The critical fault occurred about 12.30am on Wednesday after a power issue triggered a shutdown of the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, the platform used to log calls and determine whether police, firefighters or paramedics are required at an incident, tracked via GPS.

While triple-0 calls from the public were still operational, the system crash meant staff were unable to use the automated process and instead had to manually record details during the two-hour outage.

“Usual back-up measures were enacted to minimise impact to the community until CAD resumed normal operations,” a spokesman told News.com.au.

“Our staff are highly trained in Victoria’s CAD back-up procedures, which are consistent with all other Australian jurisdictions.”

Triple-0 Victoria said it is investigating the cause of the outage.

The system failure follows the Optus triple-0 outage on September 18, which affected emergency callers in multiple states and has since been linked to three deaths.

That disruption was believed to have been caused by a botched firewall update in South Australia, during which about 600 calls to emergency services failed.

Premier Jacinta Allan said she had been advised there were no community impacts during the latest outage, which lasted several hours and remains under investigation, The Guardian reported.

“At triple zero, there are extensive and intensive backup protocols for the highly trained staff to deploy should a situation like this arise, as it has overnight. The cause of the power failure is still being investigated. I’ve not got any advice that there was any impact on the community. If there is, of course, that information will be updated over the course of today.”

Ms Allan thanked the emergency staff for their swift response.

“They’re also highly trained to respond to situations when they arise, and the advice is that the call taking was not interrupted as a result of this power outage, because the backup protocols were quickly enacted.”