Victoria’s ambulance communication system failed at the weekend with paramedics unable to radio dispatch for several periods on Saturday night.
Fairfax Media reported last week that Victoria’s ambulance service ”melted down” during the record heatwave in January, causing unacceptable waits for some patients, including an elderly woman who died after waiting more than two hours for care.
On Saturday, paramedics in regional Victoria reported that for several periods of up to 15 minutes they were unable to communicate with dispatch by radio.
The disruption has been criticised by the ambulance union and the opposition, with the union saying the failure flies in the face of the government saying the service had to run at full capability to meet extra demand during heatwaves.
The Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority confirmed regional communications experienced ”intermittent disruptions” between about 7pm on Saturday and 8.40am on Sunday.
The authority said there were no reports of delays to ambulance dispatch and it was reviewing what happened.
A spokeswoman said it was investigating impacts from a ”temperature inversion” – weather that affected a communications link at Mount Cottrell, west of Melbourne.
The outage also had a slight impact on some regional police communications, she said.
Ambulance Employees Association secretary Steve McGhie said it was worrying, especially during the heatwave, that the communications system had failed. ”It puts paramedics and the public at risk,” he said.
Mr McGhie warned that without proper communication there would be delays in call-outs with incorrect information sent to ambulances. He also said if radios were not working paramedics’ duress alarm, which they use when threatened, would not work.
At the weekend a crew in Bacchus Marsh had to activate a duress alarm when a patient became threatening.
When emergency services communications fail, back-up systems, often using mobile phone and pagers, are used. The union says this is slower and does not always contain all critical information.
Last week Emergency Services Minister Kim Wells released a report into outages between May and August and said there are plans to introduce better technology.
Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews blamed Health Minister David Davis for the latest incident.
”This was a horror couple of days with the ambulance service going into meltdown for no reason other than chronic mismanagement by David Davis,” Mr Andrews said.
