Optus Outage Triggers Tragic Losses: Three Dead, 600 Emergency Calls Fail
September 23, 2025
A major outage at Optus in Western Australia and other states disrupted triple-0 emergency calls, resulting in tragic outcomes including three deaths, with the incident lasting longer than initially reported.
The outage caused approximately 600 failed emergency calls, including seven between 12.17am and 12.30am, with four of those calls originating from Western Australia.
In Perth, two men aged 74 and 49 died during the outage, with the older man reaching hospital but the younger one not, both suffering medical emergencies linked to the service failure.
A third death involved a 68-year-old woman in Adelaide, marking the third fatality associated with the outage.
Authorities confirmed that the welfare of the last unaccounted-for caller in Western Australia has now been checked, and all individuals involved in earlier calls have been accounted for.
Police and coronial investigations are ongoing as officials seek answers from Optus, amid criticism over the company's delayed response and the outage's severe impact on emergency services.
The Ambulance Employees Association of WA described the failure as a 'catastrophic' event and called for an urgent review of Optus’s emergency telecommunications infrastructure to prevent future tragedies.
Summary based on 1 source
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The West Australian • Sep 23, 2025
Optus outage: Police have ‘resolved’ and completed a welfare check for the last WA caller unaccounted for