Optus outage: Mother dies alone in hospital as nurses couldn’t reach her daughter due to network failure
A woman has spoken of her fear after her mother died alone in hospital because nurses were unable to call her while the Optus network was down.
Rachel, from Mona Vale on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, took her mother, Joy, to the hospital, just 10 minutes away, and was assured that someone would call her if her mother got worse.
Sadly, Joy’s health deteriorated but the hospital were unable to contact Rachel as she is with Optus and the network had crashed.
“I had the phone next to me just in case something happened, so I could get a call and I would be there in ten minutes to have those last moments with her,” she said Chris O’Keefe from 2GB.
The tragic human consequences of the Optus network outage were revealed when a Sydney woman was unable to be with her mother in her final moments
‘It wasn’t until my daughter FaceTimed me and said, ‘Mom, the network is down,’ did I think I should call the hospital to see if something had happened.”
When she got through, she discovered that her mother had died. Heartbreakingly, the hospital said, “We tried to call you.”
‘I just find this so sad. “If you’re so dependent on your phone and they let us down, we’ll never get that time with our mom back,” Rachel said.
‘This is absolutely shameful as we didn’t know mum had died as no one could call us.’
The outage continued to cause problems for the grieving family as they were unable to contact other family members to let them know that Joy had died.
“Optus really let us down,” Rachel said. ‘What compensation can you get? We can never get those last moments back.
“When you’re going through something traumatic like this, the last thing you need is someone you trust (let you down).
Rachel, from Mona Vale on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, took her mother, Joy, to the local hospital, just ten minutes away, and was sure they would call her if her mother got worse. But the call never came because she has an Optus phone
‘Your phone is your life (in situations like this). Your mother needs you, I need them (just to be sure). I could get a call about something so dear to me, and I didn’t do that.
‘They don’t care, there is no compensation. I’m not a company, I’m nothing to them.
“But I’ve been let down by them so much,” Rachel said.