Mile End man Steven Stavrou, 65, is in hospital recovering from a stroke after his family’s desperate triple-0 calls went unanswered during Optus’ recent outage.
Stavrou collapsed at home around 9.15am on Thursday, but every attempt by relatives to reach an ambulance failed because they were all Optus customers.
“There were four people here when it happened, and we are all with Optus, and we couldn’t get through to the ambulance service,” son-in-law Doug Costello told The Advertiser.
Realising the problem was network-wide, the family turned to a friend on Telstra, who finally reached emergency services. Paramedics rushed Stavrou to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where he remains in a serious condition.
“It’s really bad. He’s got to go to rehab,” Costello said. “I just hate to think what if he was here by himself… how long would he have been on the floor?”
The family said Optus’ handling of their complaint was insulting. “They didn’t want anything to do with it. We asked to speak to a manager. They said, ‘Just turn your phone on and off and then try again,’” Costello said.
He was furious when Optus chief executive Stephen Rue later claimed the company only became aware of triple-0 problems at 1.30pm. “That’s rubbish because we called them and told them about this at 10.15am,” he said.
The family has lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman and vowed to cut ties with Optus.
Their ordeal is one of several cases that have emerged from the outage, which lasted more than 10 hours and left Australians unable to call emergency services.
Other victims include a 69-year-old heart patient, a 75-year-old woman trapped under her mobility scooter, and a young father suffering a cellulitis infection.
Most devastatingly, the blackout has been linked to multiple deaths, including that of an Adelaide woman who suffered chest pains at home and a two-month-old baby boy in Gawler West.
Source: The Advertiser.
