Residents and businesses were plunged into the dark ages, with reports of service going down on Wednesday morning due to a damaged cable and not being restored until Thursday night, affecting calls and internet in the area.
The Lockington and District Bush Nursing Centre was disconnected from the outside world as only a few phone calls were coming in and no internet or fax services were working.
While it is understood the triple zero call was not life-threatening, Lockington and District Bush Nursing administration officer Carolyn Eade said the outage could have proved fatal for at-risk residents in an emergency, explaining they ‘‘had no way of communicating with the outside world for medical communications, no hospitals, no GPs. Medically, it was an impending disaster. We had no way to phone for urgent medication, there was no way for us to contact our nurse if we needed to and then she had no way of contacting us if it was an emergency.”
The only method of communication for the organisation was through the Ambulance Victoria radio, a network which doesn’t rely on mobile towers for communication.
Ms Eade said it was also concerning for residents who had emergency communications systems such as Telstra’s Priority Assist, a service available to Telstra customers who are living at home and have a diagnosed life threatening medical condition, as residents reported it was not working.
Ms Eade questioned if it was possible for services to be diverted through available towers while technicians restored the connection.
“The real worry was the limitations it creates for us, if there was a serious medical emergency it could have had dire consequences for that patient,” she said.
Around town it wasn’t as life-threatening, but more a threat to traders’ livelihoods as EFTPOS and phone lines were down.
Lockington Community Bank closed for two days, unable to process transactions or use systems; across the road at Foodworks it was cash-only for Wednesday.
Foodworks owners Ged and Breanna Giddings said their business was thrown into disarray over the two days as suppliers couldn’t call through and customers were creating accounts as they couldn’t pay by card.
“We took that load on and so we’re relying on people to come back and pay for their groceries,” Ged said.
While Mr Giddings expressed no concern at the honesty of shoppers, he couldn’t believe it was the only way to operate for a day.
“On Wednesday, we had five EFTPOS transactions before it went down, and people couldn’t go to the bank to get cash out.
“I walked over to the ice-cream shop to use his Optus WiFi so I could place some of our orders.”
After one day of trading with no internet or phones, Mr Giddings had enough, and opened an Optus sim from a display rack near the registers.
“I got that and put it into a 3G modem so we could have a connection again. It’s a headache you don’t need and it’s frustrating for customers — but our customers were very understanding,” he said.
“We used an employee’s mobile, who is on the Optus network, to phone out our product orders.
“Breanna, who is away with the kids, was getting more shop calls than I was, and I was calling her (using the Optus WiFi) through Snapchat. It was a circus.”
Telstra said the cause of the outage was damage to a cable and said due to the complex nature of the repair work, a specialist crew was brought in to restore service.
“We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience and understand the frustration this can cause,” a Telstra spokesperson said.
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