Ambulance Tasmania has launched an investigation into what caused an electrical outage that disrupted its communications centre early Sunday.
A terminally ill woman died during the outage, sparked by a fault in a major electrical switchboard in the state communications centre in Hobart.
The fault reduced power to the Ambulance Tasmania communications centre between 12.40am and 3.30am.
While a back-up system kicked in, there was a period of up to 35 minutes within which triple-0 calls came in but all other IT and communications functions were knocked out.
This affected two calls - one for a case that was not life-threatening and another for a terminally ill woman in cardiac arrest.
It may have delayed the dispatch of ambulances by one to two minutes, Ambulance Tasmania chief executive officer Dominic Morgan said.
He said the dead woman's death was commensurate with her condition.
He has launched a full investigation into the glitch that will include technical expertise from the NSW Ambulance Service, which had experienced a similar outage, and consultation with staff and the Health and Community Sector Union.
Share
